Guys this sucks. I wish you both luck in finding out who did this and in getting your items returned or covered by insurance. Slightly similar, I once stumbled onto a stolen motorcycle on CycleTrader.com. I was in the print version that I bought from the gas station, and on the same darn page, there was one guy with an ad that his highly modified streetbike had been stolen and not 2 ads below it, was fferent guy selling a highly modified streetbike. Pics showed the same bike! How lucky was that? I don't know if the guy ever got his bike back, but I did call the "stolen" ad # and told him to look at the CycleTrader and said sure enough that the bike for sale was indeed his.
Point of the story... These guys are crooks, not riders. They are targeting items that don't have to be registered or tagged for easy blackmarket sale. If you look hard enough and in the right publications (ie Craigslist, eBay, CycleTrader, IWANNA, etc..) you have a pretty good chance of finding them. And don't just think local either. Most of the "professionals" fence their items out of state just to assist in covering their tracks. It's not uncommon for NC goods to be as far as NY and Florida. Pay attention to Tennessee, Virginia, and West VA, as they are common places to sell stolen goods direct to end users who know they are hot and just don't care because they are never going to be resold.