Actually, the only thing I don't understand why
people bother to collect it in the first place,
is wedding cake. They keep them in small silver
boxes, but still -- yuck!
As for the whole pop culture thing, there is a
market for kitch, possibly more than for high
culture art, because what motivates the
collectors is a passion for the object
themselves. If you learn anything from reading
postings on this forum, people have definite
passions for cels.
As for the whole throwaway art/ pop culture
thing, there is a market for such things, even
for things fifty years in the past.
It's like those covers for Weird Tales, or all of
those other science short story magazines. The
artists saw them as things they did to pay the
rent, and the art itself as a throwaway. Most of
the time they painted over the canvus, so that
they could create other covers. Now they're worth
money because of their rarity and because people
like them. Sigh, to have a painting of a Martian
fighting an astronaunt hanging on my wall. :)
Samething with comic page art. In the past
companies would destroy them, or give them out to
readers -- just the cover and some splash pages,
unfortunately. It was throwaway art, but they can
fetch into the thousands of dollars.
The holy grail for Marvel art is the cover to the
Fantastic Four no.1. No one knows if it even
exits anymore. If you have any information to
it's whereabouts . . . . :)
Really what will determine a cel's value in the
future is whether or not the series manages to
survive. That's something that's difficult to
determine. I've read reviews of books which were
at the time declared to be timeless classics, but
the novels are now long out of print. Time is a
heart breaking process.
Animation will of course survive. This leaves
questions about when everything is transfered
over to computers, if cels themselves might hold
a mystique for people in the future who're
reduced to collecting pencil sketches.
Hmm, in the end, anything can happen. Time's
funny and things change. It's sensible to only
collect things that you like, and in a price
range you can afford, with the knowledge that you
might be forced to accept losses.
Markets only really break when people collect not
to keep, but to sell (basically when people buy
something in the hopes that it will increase in
price in times); and if there are no new
collectors entering the market.
As for holy grails -- maybe a good black and
white Might Atom cel. It's a classic, and more
importantly, this was during a period when they
were tossed. I've only seen one, but they didn't
post a price. Might be wrong, but it's a
thought. :) |