I've tried doing an offer once to a gallery where 
everything was open for offers. ^_^ It was for a 
nice shot of a popular character from a low-
profile show with a very small group of 
collectors. Since it wasn't a very expensive show-
-- there are very few cels that have broken the 
triple-digit mark--- I made what I thought was a 
generous offer, since it was about one and a half 
times what the cel itself would probably fetch on 
the open market on a good day. They responded 
back very nicely, saying that they had originally 
paid about three times what it would fetch on the 
open market on a good day. ^_^;; And I felt a 
little stupid over it all, and have 
ignored "gallery open for offers" posts ever 
since, even if I know there's stuff in there that 
I want.

I understand that no one likes to lose money on 
cels, but when I think of an offer period, I'm 
thinking of a situation where emergency money is 
needed quickly. When you have hospital bills, or 
a house payment, or if your car dies, whether or 
not you're losing $50 on a cel you bought five 
years ago isn't so important, as long as the 
offer is reasonable in regards to what you might 
get in the open market at the moment.

I also know that pricing is difficult on cels, 
but if someone has an absolute rock-bottom 
minimum specifically in mind, it should be posted 
to save everyone some time. If someone has one 
hundred cels in their gallery, it would be time-
consuming to mark every single one of them, but 
is it less time-consuming to spend your time 
rejecting offers that are nowhere near your 
ballpark figure? A-5 can go for $50, and A-6 can 
go for $200. You can have A-7, and you bought it 
for $10 (or for $300!) five years ago. Yes, it 
can be complicated trying to figure out what it's 
worth. But no matter what the market indicates, 
surely worth $x to yourself to keep, and price it 
accordingly. Either someone will make it worth 
your while to sell it, or they won't--- but at 
least your audience will have an idea as to what 
you have in mind. It doesn't have to be a fixed 
price; "Offers start at $x" are perfectly fine.

I don't know about offers having been 
traditionally a part of rare shots. I think that 
perhaps, rare shots were put up for offers more 
frequently because they were more likely to 
garner the kind of money an individual needed at 
the moment that necessitated their selling off a 
piece of their collection. It may be easier to 
sell one $500 cel than it is to sell 20 $25 cels, 
after all. ^_^ 

Thank goodness I've never had "phantom offer" 
experiences in trying to buy things, but I 
probably would be less inclined to deal with a 
cel collector who tried to pull that. My 
collection has gotten to the point where I'm 
quite happy with it, and am only missing a few 
things that I would like... but I don't *need* 
them. So it's easier for me to walk away from 
people who don't play by the rules I prefer. ^_^

"Collection offers" are just too ambiguous for 
me. I prefer sales pages and Ebay. If the price 
on the sales page isn't to my liking, I ignore 
it. If I see it sit there for too long, I might 
think about making a counter-offer... or maybe 
not. I've never actually gotten to that point. 
^_^