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.

I suspect this is the start of a worrying trend. I just posted a question about some similar things I have recently noticed in England.

Your comments on the Hendrix and Lennon reissues prompted me to check the Police reissues I found in Australia recently and ... nearly exactly the same!

The CD has Made in Japan but the underside of the disk has "Made in Germany by EDC".

The other differences with the Police issues I have are the obi does not have the printing on the back (although this is not unusual for a reprint) but the Japanese insert is on thicker glossy paper.

These are not imports being dumped locally - they are fraudulent misrepresentations of a Japanese product!

It seems that Universal is doing a little faking of its own! (As far as I know this is illegal in Australia as it is considered missleading advertsiing.)

I will add some scans to Police in a day or two.

I've added some scans of one of the Police Mini LP fakes here.

Please, are these also fakes?? http://www.101cd.com/search.htm?type=CAT100012&search=Genesis+vinyl+replica

I have all the Genesis ones. They seem OK but A Trick Of The Tail is made of much softer and thinner paper than the others....please say they are no fakes!!!