I will discuss the limiting distribution of the number of distinct values in a sample of iid geometrically distributed random variables. This work was motivated by a similar question (i.e. the number of distinct parts) in integer compositions. The main tool used in a proof is "analytical depoissonization" introduced a few years ago by Jacquet and Szpankowski as a method for average case analysis of certain (for example leader election) algorithms. This is based on a joint work with Guy Louchard from Universite Libre (Bruxelles).