>> You have the classic case of mixed Org installations, would be my guess.
> Aha! I think you've hit the nail on the head.

Aha.. ran into this last night also, discovering then that i had both (require 'org) AND (require 'org-plus-contrib) in use, breaking capture.
(rewriting my init to use-package while zapping elpa a few times really helped get some kinks out which sped up loading too)

maybe one day either package could recognize when the other is loaded and complain?

I'm not sure how this happened, but org-reload does seem to correct the problem.

Thank you, Kaushal!

-pd