Hi, I hadn't been following this discussion much until this morning, but there's at least one issue of how international commerce works that have been ignored here. The price difference between domestically manufactured and imported CDs isn't simply a matter of differences in VAT, GST or local sales tax depending on the municipalities involved. There's also the matter of import duty. Most, if not all, countries charge importers a percentage of the cost of the goods which they import. The result is that the wholesale cost of a Tzadik disc to a store in, say Spain, Germany, or England will probably be significantly higher than the wholesale cost to a store in the US. Since many, if not all, shops usually mark things up 100% over their costs, the resulting retail price of imported goods can be substantially higher than it might be in the home country of the goods. In most cases, I'd expect that local retailers are not trying to gouge the customers for imported avant garde music any more than their usual markup percentages, it's simply that they have to also absorb the cost of the import duty. Technically, this import duty is usually owed by individuals bringing goods into a country as well as businesses, but in many cases, because individuals don't deal with this end of the government as much as businesses do, it's somewhat easier to avoid paying the duty on discs that one might order from folks like DMG, Verge, etc. Technically in most countries, the duty is still owed and it's quite possible to hit with bigtime charges depending on how packages are labelled etc. Next time you receive a package from one of these vendors look at the value they've listed on the green or white import forms. In most cases in which you aren't paying duty, the value listed on the forms is probably significantly lower than the amount you paid. Bests, Herb -- Herb Levy P O Box 9369 Fort Worth, TX 76147 herb@eskimo.com