Cels Forum

Fraudulent seller Type A can be revealed by simple education.
You must be well educated in the art that appeared in the series
and have a good feel for the different colors used for each
character. You can also compare the thickeness of the trace lines with
those commonly found in the series, and hold a firm understanding of
the cel painting process.
This is all very well, but what about the lay person who has entered 
the hobby and does not understand the cel painting process and will buy
cels from any series they deem as cool? What's to prevent them
from picking up a fake?
And checking the lines of the cel and comparing them to those seen on TV is
a great idea, only most people don't have the patience to sit in 
front of a TV checking over 26 episodes of animation to find their cel is 
not a fraud and feel comfortable ordering it. I can assure you, at the
rate cels are snatched up by us collectors, by the time that task is done,
the cel would have been sold!
We could have an FAQ on the cel painting process so that people
know what they are buying is real, but that may be self defeating.
If the fraud holds the knowledge to make the art more realistic,
it becomes more difficult to tell if the cel is fake or not. 
Plus, who has the time or patience to scan the front and back of
every cel they sell in order to prove, by paint process alone,
it is not a fake. I've only seen that done one, on a cel of Lum at 
aino.anime when it was still up.
We do know if it has regestration holes and sequence numbers,
 they are probably real cels, but what's to stop a fake
cel from having those kind of animation givens? It isn't hard to take a marker
and write "A4" at the top of a cel. . .


*more*