I hadn't been collecting anime cels for long when
I fell in love with Rayearth.  Heh.  So of
course I started my hunt for a couple of
characters who had particularly captured my heart.

Now, I'd been collecting western animation art for
years, but the prices for those are so incredibly
varied between studios and series that this
experience was of little help when estimating the
value of a different show, let alone a Japanese one.

After a good bit of searching through dealer sites
and galleries from the helpful ol' guide list, I
happened upon a marvelous cel of one of the
coveted pretty-boys on another collector's sale
page.  Unfortunately for me, instead of being
priced, it said, "make offer."  So being the
intelligent little monkey that I thought myself to
be, I went through every dealer site I could find
which had Rayearth cels, and used their
prices as a guideline for my estimation.  While
they didn't have any cels the character I was
hoping to purchase, all the other major characters
were fairly uniform in their pricing.

Needless to say, I inadvertently lowballed my
offer and received what I will refer to here as a
"less than friendly" response.  Heh.  I was
offering only a third of what that seller had paid
for it, and her scorn left me incredibly
embarrassed and wanting to crawl into a dark hole.
 It was a long, long time before I ever made an
offer on anything again.

(Oddly enough, two months later, I was torn
between feeling victorious and feeling guilty when
that same cel went up on eBay and I nabbed it for
barely more than my offer.  Much as I loved the
cel, though, I never could get over the emotional
baggage associated with it, and eventually sold it
to a friend for what I paid.)

On the other side of the coin, a few weeks ago I
received an offer out of the blue on one of the
cels in my gallery.  It was for $30 -- obviously,
considerably less than I paid -- on an opening cel
from one of my favorite shows.  Grounds for
insult?  Well, perhaps...  However, the would-be
buyer stated in her letter that she was very new
to cel collecting, and was unsure on what to
offer.  And, taking an objective look at the cel
in question, it's easy to see where she would
underestimate the value, since it's basically just
a white silhouette on black.  Its inherent value
is not obvious.

So the would-be buyer received a polite refusal
and a short, friendly lesson in general pricing
for that series.  Plus of course an invitation to
contact me any time she had further questions on
pricing, since it's nice to have a bit of veteran
help.  :)

I've always felt that life is too short for
self-induced stress, and taking offense to
something as insignificant as a cel offer seems
like a waste of emotional energy.

Just my two yen's worth, of course.