Well, there are basically several types of situations.
There are some distributors in Japan which they have
connections with certain studios, artists and collectors.
So when these distributors get the cels, the cel dealers
will buy these cels from them. Usually these cels are
the rarer ones that you don't usually find in the regular
anime shops like Nadesico or Rurouni Kenshin...etc.
Some are stolen cels by the people who work in the studios,
they took them out and resell them to distributors or
dealers.
Some cels are give-aways in various events by the
studios, like film premiers, conventions...etc. As the
collectors get these freebies, they resell them to
distributors or dealers.
In the 70s and 80s, there are many youngsters at that time
collected tons of cels like Orange Road, Urusei Yatsura, or
Macross..etc. So these are the collectors which they often
have a lot of these old cels available. And usually cel
dealers will contact these individuals and ask them whether
they want to sell their old collections or not. Bascially,
if you want to get old and popular cels like Macross or
Orange Road, these cel collectors are the sources mainly.
Some cel dealers do have direct connections with certain
studios, so they don't have to go through the distributor
as the middleman.
Some individuals travel to anime shops in Japan like Anime
World Star, then they buy tons of cels that are available
there and resell them at higher prices here. About half
of the cel dealers on the web are doing like this. Well,
that's why you see many of them have the similar cels like
Tenchi Muyo, El Hazard, or Sailor Moon...etc because
these cels can be easily found in anime shops and they're
relatively cheap comparing to the other series of cels.
These anime shops do have rarer cels, but they often
put them in their shops' auctions.
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