Apparently… After having had my tanking sword vanish mysteriously. I have tested, and noticed that when salvaging it is possible to drop locked items.
Locked items should be blocked from being dropped while locked. This would prevent others from also having to replace gear, that could possibly be lost accidently, while salvaging on the move, if you do not notice the dropped bag.
Sorry for the late edit, but after reading the first post, I thought I may have suffered a stroke it was so poorly written.