I very likely have the files listed in sources around from previous attempts
Well, yeah, but it's also likely that someone: 1. Has multiple machines, hadn't done any work on this package on the current machine, and did a fresh "fedpkg clone" 2. Got fed up with clutter in the directory and started their work with "rm *.tar.gz *.src.rpm"
In both these cases the old sources wouldn't be around.
A.FI.