Cels Forum

There's one big thing that everyone's forgetting here when
talking about the price of cels. Animation cels of any kind
*NEVER* exist on a primary market. They have no standard
retail value that can be referred to. They start on
the "secondary" or "collectors" market - which is a VERY
unforgiving place where prices are concerned. Usually what
something will go for on the collector's market
involves "how much can people pay for it"? Obviously there
are some dealers who are better and worse about this -
people who will sell something at a good price while still
making a profit vs people who will ream you.

There is nothing more wrong with the person who buys from
an online dealer to resell than there is with the original
online dealer who bought from Japan to resell. The only
thing that happens is that now you're paying two markups,
the first dealer's and second dealer's. I agree that a
middleman, who comes in and snaps up everything good from
an update just to resell it, is a pain in the @$$ and is
doing *ZERO* to help his fellow collectors. But that person
is still only doing (on a more local level) what the
original dealer has already done.

On the plus side, *WE* (meaning collectors) control the
prices on the secondary market. We are the ones who decide
how much we pay for the cels. Each ultra-expensive cel that
you buy saying "I know it's too much, but I just have to
have this" - that is what will drive up the prices. The
collectors need to be willing to let expensive dealers sit
on their cels until they're forced to lower the price. If
the cels sell at the higher price, then that is their worth
to collectors and, hence, their fair value on the secondary
market.

With that in mind, will our avoiding the pricy, in-it-for-
huge-profit dealers make them go away? No. The collector's
market for cels is plenty big enough that pricy dealers
will still find buyers who don't care how much they're
spending. This is unfortunate, but is still only to be
blamed on the secondary market. But the more collectors who
refuse to go to the expensive dealers, the fewer of those
dealers there will be - and the fewer the better.

Myself, I do my best to stick to the good dealers. I admit
allowing myself to be reamed once or twice for something
really special, but I've also passed over countless cels
that I would have loved to have after I determined they
were being sold at too high a profit. If we all try to be
conscious of this, the prices will stay low. . . But I warn
you, anime cels are *NOT* selling at their cap!! This means
they are generally selling for much less than sellers could
get for them given a large enough number of potential
buyers - and Ebay proves it. We're all walking a very thin
line trying to get what we like and at the same time keep
our hobby from becoming outrageously expensive (like, oh,
*AMERICAN* cels?).

So my final word is essentially the cel version of what
I've told every Beanie Baby collector who's told me about
their "*AWESOME* new beanie, can I guess how much it's
worth?"

Cels are worth about $2.50 each in plastic and paint. :)

Now excuse me. . . I have to go pay Yann half this week's
paycheck for that awesome Larva cel he put in the last
update. ;)  Happy collecting! :)

Many Sharp Smiles,
--Drac (who does want to be misunderstood! Yann is a *good* dealer. :)