The answer to your original question is "it depends". I recently tried to acquire some restore CDs for a Canadian Sony Vaio laptop. Sony wouldn't ship them out of the US and wanted to charge £45 ($90) for them. They told me to get someone in the US to buy them and then to ship them to me in the UK. Great customer service.
eBay is a good one stop shop for restore CDs, but only at the manufacturers' web sites can you guarantee getting legitimate copies, if they sell them at all.
