Beatles Mono Box Set

A while back I bought The Beatles Mono Box Set. When it arrived in the mail, I eagerly opened it, immediately surprised that the cellophane wrap felt thin and fragile, and disappointed that the outer box had already started ripping. I pulled out the inner sleeve of discs and thought, "Wow, these guys really phoned it in, especially for the $150 I paid." The mini-sleeves were unevenly glued. Some of the paper felt thinner than it should have been. By the time I saw that Magical Mystery Tour's sleeve had been manufactured inside-out (so that the outer cover was within the fold), I was upset. Aside from the digital files that I could get anywhere, the whole point of the box set was to have miniature high-quality replicas of the original 12-inch albums. This set didn't fulfill that goal.

It took a couple angry searches on the web for me to realize the set was counterfeit. It's apparently a common problem with this set. Not surprising in retrospect; it overpriced and limited-edition, but missing anything to make each copy unique. Valuable and easy to duplicate -- a great combination for counterfeiters. Fortunately, Amazon's third-party seller guarantee protected me, and the mortified (genuinely, I suppose) seller refunded my payment with little prodding. I refused to mail back the set; I'm pretty sure that knowingly dropping counterfeit goods into the U.S. Mail is not a smart idea, regardless of intent.

Just a couple days ago I got a real set, directly from Amazon. As I said earlier, the real set is overpriced, but I'll admit that it's pretty much as nice as I'd hoped. Still, I think the limited-run idea was poorly executed. If they're going to charge $200 for 13 CDs and some cardboard, why not charge $1,200 and include an individually-numbered certificate of authenticity with Paul and Ringo's original signatures?