Originally Posted by BlackHarmo
That's what I feared (but thanks for the confirmation!). So far, a few days (ingame) have passed and the stuff is still there… fingers crossed. Although it's possible that some npc may pick just *one* item at a time, sleazy b*st*rds.

Every so many days it "refreshs" NPC containers (replaces the current contents with a default set of stuff). The counter might be reset if you frequently visit the container but it might not either.