Its also different if you're the one that paints 
it.  

There's a lot more emotional value if you do a 
cel yourself, too.  The first cel I did I painted 
for my boyfriend and I did all the outlines with 
a super-thin paintbrush since I couldn't find any 
paint pens and it took me over three hours (not 
going to go into how long the rest took to paint) 
and I refused to get up from my desk until I 
finished it even though he kept coming down and 
trying to get me to take a break.  Now with 
something like that, I think it kind of equals 
out the fact that it didn't go into the show, 
especially if you don't have any plans to sell it.

And yeah, I do do original cels too, and those 
are a lot harder... but not that much ^_~

ps- I've heard the other side too... only most 
people say something more along the lines 
of 'fancels are useless pieces of crap, who would 
want a cel unless it was painted by a REAL artist 
in Japan?!' so thanks for the candor.