I live in Sydney and went into a highly reputable store this week and was very pleasantly suprised to find Elton John, The Police and Stones Japanese Mini LPs priced at a very reasonable $20 AUD (about $18-19 USD).

I bought one each of The Police and a couple of Elton John (Goodbye Yellow and Captain Fantastic).

They have a sticker on the front saying (amongst other things) "This product may not be exported to Japan". No big deal - at this price of course not.... I asked if they put the sticker on and they said that no they arrived in store like this.

I have just opened Captain Fantastic. It contains 1 CD, 1 B&W Japanese and English booklet. Full Stop! No colour English Lyrics or "Scraps" booklets, no poster!! What the !@#*!

It has the correct obi and the gatefold etc is identical and the same quality (I have the Cpt Fantastic box with contents so I can compare).

This is not the store's fault - I have no idea if this is just dumping in Australia or if you may find the same in the US but...

Beware! If you are outside of Japan and you are buying locally then this may be the start of a really disappointing trend!

I hope not - maybe just a one off.

PS. Some of The Police had the incorrect obis - but I had bought all 5 and I did wind up with 5 unique obis that I swapped around but again - beware of cheap imports!!!

PPS. I will investigate others and will report later.