Can't merge duplicates

FFolks, I have a deck with many duplicate cards. When I use the tag "duplicata"to find them, I get about 500 notes.

But then, when I go to “find duplicates” to merge them, I get 0, as if there weren’t any. All the notes are the same note type

Does anyone know why I can’t merge them?
Thanks

Tags have no special meaning to Anki. Your notes could have been tagged with ‘duplicate’ in the past and then the duplicates removed. If you’ve identified cards you think are duplicates, you can check the card HTML - the text may be subtly different.