The Oddities of Cel Collecting

30'000 yen for Goten, it's a very nice cel though

I'm getting real tired of all the Dragonball cels listen on eBay and Yahoo Japan with those outrageous asking prices.

No, I'm not talking about those "helpful" resellers who blatantly relist cels from YJ and Mandarake on eBay for triple the price. Nor am I talking about those well known scalpers who've been trying to sell their same overpriced cels for years now.

I'm talking about cel dealers who most of us have known for years who are now suddenly offering DBZ cels for such insane prices I'm actually questioning their reasoning, let alone their sanity.

And then there's the "fellow" cel collector, or deluded individual who got their hands on a few items, with such high and unrealistic expectations of their cels, I can only watch their auctions, shake my head and wonder what the hell they are thinking.

I've seen it happen a lot. It starts with a few cels, all innocent and fun and games. But then comes that impulse buy of the absolute "dream cel" while basically there's no funds. But hey, yolo right? Then the hobby spirals out of control and people find themselves in debt or in trouble because funds for bills and living expenses have been spend on cels. Although not very smart, to a lot of us it's definitely recognizable, we've all been there one way or the other.

a 200'000 yen cel? You decide. It was bought for 58'000 yen on Mandarake

But when you willingly overpaid or purposely inflated the price of a cel by overbidding, simply because you "had to have it", how realistic is it to expect others will also dish out what you paid?

True; cels are getting more rare. All shows are CG nowadays, and no new cels have been made in years. Even genga are getting scarce, which is a normal and inevitable stage of evolution I guess. We knew 10 years ago already we were trying to keep a dying market alive.

But the cel community has always been relatively small and a lot of us aren't as actively buying as we used to.

Are we really expected to happily pay $399 for a partial chibi Gohan, faded and with no background?

Apparently this Gohan is worth a grand, give or take a couple of bucks. Ugh..

These definitely be strange times. Cel collecting has reached an all time low for a lot of the other series I used to follow.

Remember when you couldn't get a Sesshoumarou from Inuyasha for under $1000? Or when any character of Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust would cost you an arm and a leg (because we were out of kidneys)? I've seen high end cels from these shows being sold for no more than $130.

But not Dragonball. People are asking ridiculous prices for mediocre cels, while high-end auctions on Mandarake are ending on amounts a year's worth of mortgage.

I wish I could blame Super for the recent increase of interest in everything Dragonball related, but the truth is, the show has always been popular. The only difference now is that more people nowadays are aware of the diamonds in the rough that are production anime cels. And we the people have a lot more cash to burn.