I noticed that some trusted sellers from China sell mini LP CDs cheaper than the official obi price. Why is that so? I mean, these aren't supposed to be counterfeits, but still are considerably cheaper.

A couple of years ago I bought several cheap mini LPs, and these were mostly recordings that, in my opinion, are less popular. For example, Iggy Pop, The Damned, less popular records by the Kinks, Motorhead. But still... why are they so cheap?

Some companies when they have overstocks or un unsold items out of fashion or out of the scheduled time life run sell these items "by the weight" to international merchants with the sole condition to be sold in a country "out of his market". That´s why you can find these CDs in China, by example.

This is not only about Japanese Mini LPs. I will show you an example from my country (Spain):
http://www.discogs.com/sell/list?release_id=2988430&ev=rb

There you will see 4 CD units of the album "Koniec" from the spanish band "Chucho". 3 of them are being sold from China starting at $3.00
(about €2.21) and the 4th is being sold from Spain at €17.19. It´s more, the 3 units from China are Still Sealed. Are they original? Yes, I can proof that, I have one unit bought in my country and another one bought from that dealer in China.

In this case, the spanish label -Sinnamon Records- went out of businnes in 2008 or 2009 and from that day no more products left his warehouse. Probably all his stock was put on auction by the court to partially pay his debts.

So here have 2 of the common situations: get ride out of overstocks or bankruptcy. Japanese Mini LPs are in the first case (overstocks).

Hope this will answer you.

Txomin

Thank you for the explanation. I bought Metallica CDs from such a seller and I see they are exactly the same as the ones that I had bought from Japan.

Sometimes are not exactly the same and they have a stiker over the bar code meaning that are not for sale.