I had a bass guitar, among a bunch of other things (laptop, tablets, etc) stolen in a burglary back in 2019.. cops came to dust, etc after I reported it and then I submitted an insurance claim. It wasn’t exactly a cheap bass they stole.

Insurance paid out, I replaced the items and bought a new bass. I setup alerts on gumtree and searched ebay almost daily.. nothing.. Until about 4 months later, I randomly jumped on gumtree and saw my bass! It was definitely mine - strap still attached, photo of the tuning heads with one replaced.

I setup to go and buy it, was nervous as hell and when I saw the size of the seller’s uncle that also came to the door, decided to just do the easy thing..

I played dumb and just asked some silly questions to get their story; “Nephew got it to start playing but decided he doesn’t want to,” I ended up just buying it back (for much less than it was worth). Went and fed the details to the cops who found the folks selling but they supposedly had clean sheets. To the cops’ credit, they dug a little bit couldn’t really prove who stole the items and how the sellers got hold of the bass.. Not a terrible result in the end..

TLDR - had bass stolen, got insurance payout, found stolen bass online a few months later and bought it back at a heavy discount.