Last year, two backpacks were stolen from my care. One of those was my magic backpack, the other my teacher backpack. A police report was filed, but what else can you do? Hope someone sells it and it gets seen by people that know my cards?
Well, that happened. One of my custom Wastelands were bought from a relatively local store (within an hour of where I live) and spotted by a fellow EDH player familiar with my pimp shit.
I will edit in pics later, but I went to said store, talked to owner and was able to recover my 3 altered Wastelands and an altared Blightsteel Collossus that was also in the display.
So obviously I have some info on who sold the cards to the store. I am totally willing to let the police take over, assuming they plan to follow up on any of this (I have no way of knowing if the police are going to want to investigate a lead on a 15K stolen collection or not.
I am posting this much here, on TMD because people here care. Any advice?
Things I am considering:

1. say nothing more till cops talk to me (ie, wait for the professionals)?
2. Do what I'm doing and find more clues by reaching out actively in MTG groups on social media?
3. Go nuts, make a film out of this because I am leaving behind my life as school teacher, and moving out into the world pursuing a life of music and art? (and if the cops help, great, but wait, what?)
4. Get a lawyer/PrivateDetective/CallPoliceStation and actively get the cops helping solve this crime now. This is 15K worth of cards, and this is what cops are for. Make a stink. ?

I am currently doing step three, and got interrupted by this bizarre thing called "getting hella lucky" by having my unique cards surface.

I don't know if my posts about my cards being lost are on this version of TMD, but TheManaDrain gets the first scoop bitches!

Thoughts?

If you have his address I would wreck his day. I have the name and general location of someone who ripped me off for 500 tickets on mtgo and if I ever find myself in Oregon with some time to kill, I would absolutely seek and destroy this person. I posted an ad on Craig's list for someone to rough him up a little in exchange for money, and I got several responses before my post was taken down. But yeah the point is the police aren't going to do anything and you've got to take justice into your own hands

@desolutionist all of this happened in the last 24 hours.
All I know is that my cards were sold (as valuable Magic cards do), and ended up on the shelf of a store. I am fairly confident that I can solve the mystery of who sold the cards to the localish store, but I have no idea how much the police will help.
I have 1 vote for #4 (pester police).

@LotusHead I believe there was a story of cards stolen recently, in which the persons who's property was stolen went so far as to provide descriptions of the stolen items to card shops in their entire part of the country. If I remember, this resulted in a shop owner calling the police while the thief was actually in the store trying to make a sale, and there was an arrest. A good deal of the remaining cards were found in the thief's car and were recovered. I urge you to call or email all the card shops that are at all near you. Shop owners can find themselves out the money, in cases where they buy stolen property for resale, so they have every motive to help you out and report thieves. I really hope you get this stuff back. Best of luck to you.

@Topical_Island I can find out who sold yhe wastelands to the store, hence a start. But they could have changed hands a few times before it got to the seller. At police dept now, will give detailed list of stolen cards.

The problem with getting the police involved is that they protect the rights of the thief as well...

@LotusHead - You do a mix of 1 and 2 in your original list. Let the professionals do their job, but dont 'do nothing and wait.' Take action like you outline in #2. Give them any help they can get. Unless they are players they will be at a loss as to what to look out for and how to handle this kind of a theft. They will be canvassing pawn shops and the like.

1. Get any pictures you have of the unique cards to show the cops
2. Get pictures of those cards unaltered so the cops can see the difference and know what to look out for
3. Get some ebay prices for similar alters and other cards that were stolen to show the cops the actual value of the items in question.
4. Notify the police asap about where you recovered the stolen items from so they can interview the person at the shop who made the purchase.

Hopefully this works. Been a long time since I tried pics.

So my 4 Wastelands and altered BSC have been recovered at a local store (The store is blameless, but can confirm who sold them the cards if I find out who did.
I am sure that whoever sold the cards to the localish store did not know they were stolen, but knows where they got them from. I plan to use social media to reach that person and have them contact me to help with my investigation. That's when the cops are willing to do more on their end. Tomorrow I will get the 3rd Wasteland (the 4th was not altered so was not actually unique like these are) and figure out how to get my message out. I will give the cops a detailed report of what I remember was in the backpack, contact the person who sold the cards to the store, then hand back to cops/works with cops who are the professionals.
Enjoy the pic! Thanks for all your advise, and I'm sure I will make a list of the power/notable LotusHead cards (Who recently got a playset of Foil Chalice Of The Void, or Vintage Dredge Deck, or Modern/Legacy Robots Deck, Or Melek EDH or Sliver Queen EDH, or Proxied up Vintage Oath decks, etc.

@LotusHead I hope this A-hole gets caught by Encyclopedia Brown, because of a cute little dog and him misspelling the word Pierogi.

@LotusHead I think at this point doing too much public advertising may not be the best thing. Talk to the person who sold the cards to the store and see where that goes and get the cops involved at that point.

@Khahan Current plan is to
A) Get my last wasteland from the guy who has it.
B) update police report online to have a more specific list of what was in the backpack
C) Try and get the store owner to remember who sold him these cards (This means finding out how many of my cards are still at the store, to see if anything jobs the owner's memory. Even if it's just to establish the time the cards were bought). Basically, get a name of who sold the cards to the store. This will take work, but reaching out publically to get that person to come to me is another way of going about it.
I prefer the plan to find out what else of mine made it to the store (recover what I can if there is more to be recovered at this site).
D) Turn that name over to cops and let the professionals take over.
E) Contact similar stores. Having the exact date would be helpful.

My timeline is approximately one month, then I plan to move out of state. So I would really like to get that name first.

FYI - its almost certainly illegal for the store to knowingly deal in stolen goods. depending on where you are, intent may not even matter. You've clearly shown that some of the cards on display were stolen. They aren't doing you a favor, they are following the law. Maybe I'm wrong, but I get the impression from your posts that the store isn't doing everything in its power to determine if they have any more of your cards.

If I were you, I'd bring the police in right now and have them deal with the store owner, and whoever sold them the stolen goods. Both parties may be innocent, but that doesn't mean they can just plead ignorance, and continue on their way. At the very least, both accepted/are in possession of stolen goods. Depending on state/local laws, its possible they've already committed a felony. If you think the cards crossed state lines, its entirely possible they've committed a federal crime. You meet the min dollar amount. Felony possession of stolen goods is a big deal with lots of consequences.

Anyways, all parties should be working with the police. not you.

Who's got two thumbs, a BLACKER LOTUS (signed from Unglued), and just found his MTG Familiar app on previous phone that had a running total of the choice cards in my backpack?
<<<<<<====------- This Guy! Whoot!
Anyways, the Shop owner has hinted that now that he's thought about it, he has some likely candidates in mind. Now that I got my ACTUAL LIST (yes, I made a short vid. Should I post? or keep secret?), I will probably be there 11AM tomorrow.

@LotusHead my vote is #4
Also, how do we know store employees aren't involved in the theft and are just stalling? P.I. and police should be involved.
Also, I remember those wastelands just from past tournament pics you posted in the old tmd. Glad you're getting at least some of the cards back.

@Ten-Ten I personally know from experience the integrity of this guy. After I recover what there is to recover (and hand reigns over to the police), I will go public on where this is. And such.

I'm heading out to recover my cards from the store now. Once we see what is still at the store, hopefully the store owner will narrow down who sold the cards. (To recap, I assume whoever sold the cards didn't now they were stolen. I just need that confirmed name to let the Police take over.

I recovered Promo WurmCoil Engine (that had crease where chair ran over it), Foil Triskele (French Trike), Foil Triskellion (Not french), Asian Triskelian from Anthologies most likely (not foil), Foil Duplicant from Mirroden block (bent as foils sometimes are). These were all in same deck (with power, wastelands etc), but Altered Gilded Lotus and Altered Sundering Titan (all three with silver sharpie and similar art styles) were recognized as "yeah, I saw that, it sold a long time ago". But stuff not found are say, Vintage Dredge with 3 proxies (Bazaar Bazaar and Bazaar with art by BC), Affinity.dec with Arcbound Ravagers with sharpied borders cuz my teammates were idiots, Ancient Tombs (likely foil) and Tezzeret Agent of Bolas (don't remember if anyone ever gave me the foil one), Melek EDH Deck, Sliver EDH deck (with Sliver Token that looked like a token for an arcade game hand drawn), Proxied up Oath of Druids, Blue Mentor, Auriok Salvager deck with 1 Foil, 1 altered Salvager, 4 foil Trinket Mages from 5th Dawn, a playset of signed Ice Ace Brainstorms (signed by Chris Rush in black sharpie) and so forth. Will write up list and distribute it here and to all the FB pages and store pages I can.
Also, will update police report to have actual contents described.
Will also shop around the name I have to see if anyone I know knows this person (it didn't come up on FB, but not everyone does FaceBook.
Whoot!

Person and address exist, left business card with wife. Probably not this guy, but I havent talked to him yet. Apparently he does.comics but not MTG. We will see.

@LotusHead Online police report was rejected, and said I had to come in, which I was more than happy to do. Cops listened to me explain situation again, and they want me to contact Davis PD once I have my list of cards typed up. (I live in Fairfield, cards stolen in Fairfield, cards recovered at Bizarro World in Davis. )
Once list types up, will post to all the MTG stores/FB groups to see if cards were unloaded elsewhere.

Well, here's a rough draft of what my MTG App has listed, plus filling in some gaps from memory.
List of Cards on google docs
Talked to FFPD in person again. They want this list, and for me to talk to Davis PD (where cards were recovered, to pick up investigation from there, so that's what I'm doing. Making list. Will contact Davis PD soon.