Cels Forum

What went wrong is that each time someone mention
something in relation to a dealer, whoever ordered
successfuly once from that dealer and got what is,
after all, normal service, feel a urge to polish
his armor, sharpen his sword, climb on his white
horse and start a holy war...

Let's face it folk, every body, dealers included,
can make a mistake. Every one can be fooled by
a very good fake or mistake a promotional cel
for a production one. Me included !
Only dealers getting cels directly from a studio,
and there is nearly none, can claim to be 100%
sure about a cel. Saying : we got it from a trusted
shop/person is simply not good enough : that person
could be mistaken too. And shops like Mandarake or
AWS are the "worse" of references : they deal in
quantity. They don't care (and don't have the time to)
about where their cels are coming from. You will often
find promotional or fake cels sold there among others.
(not on pupose naturaly).

I would like the person who claim to be able to tell
every fake/promo cels from production one to teach
me their trick : because I certainly can't. The best
I manage is to make an well-informed guess. But 100%,
I can't.

So yes, I agree with you, I don't see what there is
offending/insulting to wonder if a cel is production
or not. It's not an attack against the seller. It's
just a query. I don't think you every suggested that
the seller sold you a fake cel knowingly. You just
wondered if it could be a fake...

Now to answer your question (claiming to have a few
more information than most people that saddled their
horses), TOEI made a large number of promotional
cels from Sailor Moon. I don't know if they were for
sale or whatever but they used at least some of them
for some kind of exhibit with real production cel.
(that why many Sailor Moon background are cut to the
size of the cel). Often those cels have a single number
writen on them instead of a letter followed by a
number. So it's well possible that your cel is one of
them. Not a production cel used in the anime directly
but one made by TOEI for whatever purpose.

Cheers,
Yann Stettler