[iGlitch]

taken from mod Ash

The item lending system in RuneScape is quite complicated. Frequently people find that it's not working how they expect, and they reasonably assume that it's broken. For example, I've had perfectly intelligent people complaining to me that their lent items went missing, only to find that they were trying to retrieve the lent items from the GE collection box.

I'd quite like to rework how you get lent items back, to make it simpler, although there are other problems that need more urgent attention.

For what it's worth, the item lending system works like this:
The lender's item is moved to an escrow inventory (on their account).
A new fake version of the item is given to the borrower.
At the end of the loan, the fake item is taken off the borrower, and the lender is allowed to reclaim their property from the escrow inventory.
So if you've lent out an item, you should always see it in your Returned Items box (talk to a banker) and you should be entitled to claim it at the end of the loan.
Since the item is never removed from the lender's account at all, it's unlikely that they can be stolen. So far so good, anyway.