Oh my. You just gave me an idea, and I've already gone ahead and tested it.
You can use another crate to force unlock the items.
Dip the shopping basket in via corner and then click at the box below a couple time to seal and unseal or unseal and seal.
Managed to buy two 2h grips, verified locked to crate, able to carry all 3 with just the 2h grip being held, and then managed to get both unlocked by fiddling with another crate
As I read your post it made me think about Items locked via ESC/Menu - and how you can lock them in air by holding them, ESC/Menu, releasing while in menu, returning to gameplay, and then attempting to hold them again, immediately. (Displayed picture of locked items in mid-air in third post ) - You can break their locks by wrapping another crate around them and then closing it, binding their physics to that crate
WELL.
More to the point. There's a few things you can do with shopping basket locked items, I've managed to successfully buy nearly the entire store (minus most pole grips) and unlock them via another crate.
Primarily the easiest thing to do, is to lock "crate" of locked physics, to the other crate.... Note: I said the "crate" of locked physics... As in the non-existent shopping basket that you can't unlock.
when you close the player-crate around the Crate that is spawned from leaving with the shopping basket, it UNLOCKS the crate from the "location" at which the shopping basket was, leaving the Shopping basket, and all the locked items, detached from the crate-SB (Crate-SB will now be shoppin basket that's left and turned into crate)
The Crate-SB then can be ROTATED off of the location, Nearly entirely free, if not entirely free, of all the locked items - leaving them locked mid air above the other crate - They're locked to a "crate" (the shopping basket) and that is locked inside your other Player-Crate
After you've Removed Crate-SB from the equation - successfully unlocking other "floating" items is a TON easier since you don't have to work around the physics of the crate - Simply rotate grips so they're a little straighter, and drop another Player-Crate ontop of them, Lock, bam, they're all free now. Unlock and work with your new grips.
Alternatively you can try and work around the crate-SB - Like I did for the first two grips. - Which is easier if its a smaller purchase without a lot of stacked item items,
Additionally - Maybe alternatively - You can actually still highlight and ROTATE all the items, despite them still being Physics-lost/disabled. - This won't free them physically, however, you might be able to make it easier to hook another box onto them, and free their physics that way.
All without bringing your hard-earned cash anywhere near that trigger happy incinerator
Which. wasn't a bad idea, actually, Since it was the crate despawning that freed the items in other ... example?
Now how to word this a bit.. less... words..y. so it can serve as a more condensed, to the point, workaround/fix in the actual second post...