...Hope this doesn't happen in the PI considering piracy is so abundant and has strong protection from the bad eggs of the law!
In a manner of speaking, it hasn't happened here, at least not to the extent that it happens to initial VHS releases in the US.
Initial VHS releases in the US happen to be the second in the release hierarchy. First being theatrical. Since this usually happens before the usual 6 month wait between first theatrical release and first video release.
This is used as a marketing gauge to see how popular a video release would be. The high price discourages buying and encourages renting. The other common gauge used is pre-orders of certain titles (this happened with Bossa Nova and other titles), but most still use this high priced VHS release version as a gauge as well, before going into the investment of pressing DVD masters. I doubt that this happens here as Video Rental stores wouldn't be willing to pay more than we do for their movies. The release hierarchy doesn't seem to be followed here too well with the exception of Blockbusters as releases are usually late by 6 months anyway. Most of the time, a movie is being released here theatrically at the same time the R1 DVD comes out. Most of the time R1's come out here even before local theatical release.
In the RP, we've experienced the initial DVD release of movies like "Swordfish" trying to sell at full price, but that didn't work out too well so it was included in the Warner sale a few days later. Other DVD's have followed too, some Magna releases (Evolution and others) are being sold at the full P999 retail, but they too will go down to the sale prices in time.
Having said that, what I surmise happens here is that the distributors attempt to get more out of the new releases first, but will eventually go down in price.
And finally to get back to the thread topic, I don't really own any DVD's that I would consider rare. but since it has been mentioned in this thread, I do own a copy of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon initial R3 release with the English soundtrack.