My theory is that as people becomes less and less familiar with physical media, this will happen more often. IMHO to the packer, as long as the artist/album and perhaps the cover art match, it is the same product!
This person is probably your typical streaming user - search for what you want, listen to whatever it pops up first... no idea, nor does she/he care about re-masters/versions/etc...
v
I agree, and at the same time I'd say it's also the converse: as the CD medium has gone into full decline, the vintage CD collector community has grown and become more detail-oriented, with the result that the vast majority of CDs are worth little but a sizable fraction of older CDs are worth more than they've ever been worth on the secondary collectors' market.
So you've got a lot of people who are now taking a second look at their collections and, with the help of sites like Discogs, noticing distinctions between very similar, often bit-identical, pressings of albums made by DADC, US WEA/SRC, Daio Kosan Japan, Alsdorf Germany, Polygram West Germany, Polygram US - and with that discs with solid aluminum hubs, clear plastic hubs, variation in printed catalogue number or disc face art, target vs non-target designs, pre-1994 original pressings vs post-1994 represses with IFPI codes in the matrix, and so on.
There are all kinds of minutae, and a good deal of it is stuff that virtually no one ever paid attention to until a few years ago, and in many cases was impossible to search for or try to buy in any systematic way until Discogs blew up and places like Decluttr started accumulating millions of CDs precisely because everyone started dumping their collections.
If you are into buying specific pressings (and I count myself among those folks), then you have to do some basic due diligence to figure out which vendors and sellers are set up to reliably send you the exact pressing that is described, and which are not.
Also, as a general comment (not directed specifically at the OP), I have seen countless complaints online from disappointed buyers who never made sure the CD on offer was in fact the exact one they wanted. They buy from eBay based on the automated description and some - but not all - of the crucial details being visible in the photos; they buy from Discogs based solely on the pressing entry under which the seller has listed the item, even if it's a CD that has more than 100 pressings incuding several extremely similar variations, and they don't message the seller to make sure it's the exact right one before they buy. So much of the frustration I see online from this stuff comes from folks making the purchase based on what they hope it is rather than just reaching out and finding out one way or the other. (Same goes for folks who buy vinyl based solely on seller's grading code, with no photos.)
