THE "LIVE": The Legend Comes Alive Japanese promo-only cassette tape

Certainly rare but over-valued?

The blog article this time, unlike regular ones, is not on vinyl but about cassette collectible. I had been watching with a great interest a Yahoo! auction in Japan since last week because of highly competitive bidding. The auctioned item was the above-mentioned custom promotional-only cassette tape (CBS/SONY XDKP 93022), which ended up a few days ago (July 9) with the final bid close to $300! I guessed the final bid amount would be around one-third of the actual one, though. As you can see, this particular auction resulted in total cumulative bids of over 20 that were actually placed by three presumably hard core collectors (I did not join the auction, just following).

I wonder what "B001" and B002" stamped on the bottom of the
cassettes refer to.  Reflecting the difference in release timing?

Released nearly three decades back, I know the item is rare and hard to come by even in Japan, and the Lost In The Flood collector's website describes that this cassette is ultra-scarce, especially in comparison to the vinyl LP counterpart which is relatively common as a promo-only release. I agree with this comment (though NOT regarding it as super rare from my point of view); however, the final bid amount is just overwhelming taking into consideration that this was a domestic auction not intended to open internationally. I mean, because of the rarity and popularity, severe bidding competition is often expected for neat Japanese collectibles like this one if put forward on international auction such as eBay, which would eventually result in incredibly high bid amounts (but which would usually not happen at domestic auction because of the relatively smaller number of participants and because domestic collectors obviously have more chance of finding the item than oversea collectors).

A good example is a recently completed eBay auction on the sample copy for Brilliant Disguise one-side Japanese 7" vinyl (CBS/SONY 04SP 1075) with the final bid of $360. Just for your information, back in late 1980s, the regular copies were sold at 400-yen (approximately $3 according to the current USD-Yen exchange rate). Simply unbelievable as the difference between

"Mi-hon-ban" three-Kanji character
referring to sample disc

the sample and regular copies is only whether or not "Mi-hon-ban" (three Kanji characters) is printed on the orange paper label and nothing else (see boxed three Kanji letters on the left-hand picture, generally meaning "sample disc" but often used with no distinction for test pressing or acetate disc). As for Brilliant Disuguise singles released in Japan, much more famous and highly valued is a custom-promo only white label 7" version (CBS/SONY XDSP 93095), but I wonder whether even such a copy deserves this amount of money.

On the cassette itself: although LITF does not mention clearly, as shown above, the white cassette case for this release is not a cheap conventional one, but rather seems to be specially designed (though not sure as I don't collect cassettes in the first place), with the sleeve protected by a clear plastic layer, and inside is a pocket holding a fold-out reprint for the promo-only LP's rear sleeve.