Wow, cool looking Snow White cel. Thanks for 
sharing the info. 

But the question about American vs. Japanese cel 
prices intrigues me so I'm going to hop into this 
conversation. 

I think Chi is right. You can't really compare 
DBZ cels to Snow White. It's more logical to 
compare to Ghibli whose movies are cultural icons 
to Japan much as Disney is to America. The 
difference is, Ghibli movies are more recent, and 
the cels are obviously more plentiful than Snow 
White cels because the cel market is stronger now 
than it was in the 40s. Even though top Ghibli 
cels can reach into the thousands, you can still 
purchase interesting cels for much, much less 
than the top price -- simply because they exist. 
(I'm not afraid to say that I'm a cheapskate 
Ghibli collector). 

American animation cels are, on the whole, more 
expensive for a comparable TV series. For 
example, I'd love to have a Batman Animated 
series cel. It was a decently long series however 
Warner Brothers limited the release of such cels 
to their Warner Brothers' stores thereby 
controlling the prices for the market. The 
expectation of price is up in the hundreds and 
you can't find a cheapie cel to save your life. 
For most Japanese shows, a lot of cels are 
released and then are filtered into a variety of 
dealers. That way, you could have bought a really 
nice DBZ cel a couple years ago for a pittance 
(or so my DBZ collecting friends tell me). That 
was =never= true for Batman cels. 

To Drac: to be fair, it does seem that trimming 
cels was a common practice in the early days of 
animation. I'm no expert on American animation 
but I've seen several examples of such. Sad, but 
true.

OT: I really like the Snow White cel seller's 
other auction: 

http://cgi.ebay.com/disney/aw-
cgi/ebayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1643874327&r=0&t=0

Don't you think it would be very neat to own a 
car from the Snow White ride?

And lastly, I have, in fact, updated my Ghibli 
galleries so please go take a look at the link 
above. (Two Omoide Poroporo cels and one Porco 
Rosso).

Thanks for letting me write so much ^_^

Wendy