Cels Forum

	It is with some interest that Bill and I have read the comments about the cel from "Ah! Megami-sama" we recently offered on our site.  Perhaps we should clarify a few things for all of you.
	First of all, Bill and I got into this because we*re collectors ourselves, but these days the only shows we know much about are the ones we collect personally--which is to say, the ones that don't go up on our site for sale.  We don't watch Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, Ah! Megami-sama, or almost anything else that we carry cels from.  We don't have time to track down each cel and its respective scene for the 6000  cels we have posted to date. Perhaps foolishly, we assume that the people who actually want to buy the stuff know more about it than us.  For the most part, no one could possibly know less.  This is why we say they come with "a background" instead of stating they are "key-master set-ups".  Without concept sketches that depict the background, or matching shot numbers on both the cel and background, we are in the dark as to whether it is "key-master" or not.
	Secondly, we have NEVER thrown a cel on a loose background.  We will NEVER do so, for any reason whatsoever, and we deeply resent the implication that we did.  Customers have asked about buying cels with the intent of swapping the backgrounds themselves, and have also inquired about the possibility of us carrying loose backgrounds in the future.  But we have not done the latter for the very reason that it would undermine everyone's faith in the cels with backgrounds that we were currently offering for sale.  Each and every cel with a background you see on our site now or have seen there in the past is just as it was when we acquired it.  Don't confuse us with studios like Toei, who deliberately mismatch "A" shots to any background they have handy.  But most of our cels come from the same reliable sources as all the other online dealers, and that includes you, Yann.  Your errand boy in Tokyo might be able to confirm that the cel is just as it was when Mandarake sold it to me last Saturday, and if you have any slanderous comments about that shop we'd be glad to convey them to our friends there.
	We realize that the great majority of cel-collectors aren't of a suspicious mindset, but just to reassure them we had to respond to the charges leveled by the annoyingly vocal minority.  If you still have any reservations about the way we do business, then don't patronize us.  It's that simple.  The individual who ordered the Ah! Megami-sama cel in question has been fully apprised of the situation and been offered a chance to cancel the order if they so wish.  
	This is a hobby, and it should be fun--why else would we spend so much time writing comic captions that don't put a red cent in our pocket when a lifeless description would suffice? Because we think we should make it worth everyone's trouble to look at our pages, whether they buy anything or not.  We do not appreciate being painted as devious money-grubbing whores, and we expect an apology to be posted to this page.  If no retraction is forthcoming, kindly remove us from your web-ring, Yann.

Kevin Leahy
anime-cel.com