A SECOND series of raids on Phuket's copy goods heartland targetted 15 larger stores in Patong yesterday - so genuine pirate bargains will now be hard to find when Phuket tourists and residents go shopping for brand rip-offs.

Thursday's raids filled several pick-ups with bags containing quality labels of all kinds, carefully separated and tagged in distinctive black plastic. It followed raids on 13 other Patong stores on Wednesday by Bangkok-based police cracking down on movie and music copyright abusers.

''It's just coincidence,'' police said when asked how it was that Thursday's raid followed so quickly after Wednesday's raids. ''The Phuket police usually raid for copy goods at least once a month.''

Both raids probably had something to do with the announcement this week that Thailand remained on the US watch list for breaches of intellectual property rights.

All kinds of goods were bagged in Thursday's Part II raid, with a street value placed on the thousands of items of 10 million baht. Wednesday's haul of 100,000 pirate CDs was said to have a street value of 20 million baht.

One CD vendor told Phuketwan that a TV series package consisting of three CDs would go on sale for 1000 baht, although this could sometimes be bargained down to 600 baht.

Bags, wallets, purses, watches and sunglasses by the score were snapped up by police yesterday.

It was plain from the amount of sorting of items that was carried out that a clear account was being made of every brand and item.

The shops that were raided yesterday afternoon were mostly large early openers, many frequented by locals as well as tourists. Some of the smaller outlets which only open at night remained closed during the raids.