I concur with you Mark, the Japanese masterings are great and like you i'm a big fan of the cover art of the LP.

I have a few that fall somewhere between the two designs. These have a cardboard sleeve that when opened, exposes a plastic carrier for the disc. They feel nice

Off the top of my head: Not From There, Cartoon, Painters and Dockers, TISM... ah coincidence?... all Australian bands.

More cool stuff from the Hard Format.
The work of these guys are absolutly smashing!!!

yeah, the trouble with jewel cases these days is that they tend to cast them out of such a brittle plastic that they often snap their hinges just by being opened. anyone familiar with that frail plastic that U.S. plastic model kit companies love to use for the transparent parts in their kits? i'd bet that today's jewels are cast with that same crappy formulation...

Also i found out that the old 5.25 floppy discks make a very cool cd sleeve. Just slice down one of the edges, gut the ferro-magnetic goodness inside, and insert CD.
...and with the inside disckette we can make a cd mate... Later i'll put this idea in another topic.

cool, i would have never thought of that.