Okay, so as most of you already know, I'm a 
Slayers fiend.  And as such, I was absolutely 
ECSTATIC to find this lovely backgrounded shot of 
Amelia and Zel for auction on Yahoo Japan a few 
weeks back:




As you can probably imagine, I bid what I 
figured it was worth, and in fact won the auction 
for just slightly less than my maximum bid.  I was 
a happy little auction camper.


Now let's fast forward to last Friday.  After what 
seemed like an eternity of waiting, my latest 
batch of goodies arrived from Celga, and I 
gleefully ripped into 'em to scope out all my new 
Slayers cels.  At first glance, this one seemed 
marvelous.


Then I took it out of the cel bag to scan it.


Ladies and gentlemen, I have rarely felt so 
appalled, upset, and embarrassed all at the same 
time.  Here is what I apparently purchased:




Not only the background, but the BOTTOM CEL LAYER 
as well were just a laser photocopy.  And you 
know, I'm willing to bet that the description 
actually stated this fact, but hey, I can't read 
Japanese.

So here I sit, feeling like a chump.  From now on, 
I'll be using eLingo on every auction description 
I peruse, and I highly recommend that everyone 
else here does the same.  Spare yourselves both 
the expense and the knowledge that somewhere 
overseas, some seller who DOES speak Japanese is 
counting your money and laughing.

The cel is now heading off to eBay, where it will 
be listed as most of a cel with a photocopied 
layer and background, and where somebody will 
hopefully take it away from me for a fraction of 
what I paid and keep me from having to look at the 
damn thing and feel even dumber.