I think you are right when you say ABC studio 
produced cels were not meant to be released 
commercially. Still a portion of those that are 
available on the market were originally come by 
legitamite means. Even though they were not 
directly sold to the market, does not mean some 
were not sold to specific people or given away. I 
know of a number of instances (especially 
pre-1985) were animators were simply given cels if 
they asked (this is true both in America and 
Japan). There was no interest in them at that 
time.

The ABC studio is one case where there was no 
release and a good percentage probably came from 
people walking out with the cels (or industrial 
waste - which is probably what is what considered 
at the time). This cannot be used as a general 
rule for all animation studios in Japan. 

Licencing is a term that is only appropriate when 
used in regards to a copyrighted item. You do not 
have licencing issues with cels because they are 
not copyrighted individually. If you try to use 
images displayed on a cel for other commercial 
activities, you are not breaking a copyright on 
the cel, but rather you are breaking the copyright 
on the intellectual property rights and copyrights 
that they have from the produced show and (or) 
manga. Cels by themselves are not illegual unless 
it can be shown that they were stollen (which is 
almost impossible to do except for maybe the 
original 200-300 cels that were stolen from 
Evangelion series several years ago). Most cels 
currently being released to the market are coming 
out though legitamite or semi-legitamite sources. 

If dealers do not have direct contracts with a 
studio (which is the case for almost all 
non-Japanese dealers), then they do their 
interaction with Japanese dealers that do. These 
dealers have arrangements with specific animation 
studios to get cels. This is not illegal and is 
usually a factor that is dependent on how much 
effert the studio wants to take in releasing the 
cels to the general market. Most of these 
agreements have existed for a long time and made 
between people who already knew each other (i.e. 
the old friends network). This is not illegal, it 
is just hard to make such an arrangement if your 
not part of the network.

AIC has directly been releasing cels to the public 
at auctions and sales for a number of years. I 
think Yann can talk on this issue at some length. 
I know that a vast majority of the BGC crash cels 
were in hands of Animego as part of a contractual 
deal for getting the series and they had the 
right to dispose of them however they say fit. 

To my knowledge, for the last 3 years at least, 
the only reason I have heard that Japanese do not 
want to sell to foreigners is that it is too much 
trouble getting payment and communicating with 
them. Some of the prize cels when I first started 
collecting were not intended for sale out of 
Japan, but I have not run into this problem at all 
over the last 2 years. I agree that prior to 1989 
that might be correct, but it is 2001. Also while 
a dealer can tell you that something should not be 
sold out of japan, this does not carry the weight 
of law behind it. It is mostly inforced by the 
fact that if it was found out that you sold it to 
someone not in Japan, that person would no longer 
sell to you.

Catch you later,
Marcus