Collection size and how did you start?

Hmmm . . . I was on an ebay shopping spree, too. Lo and behold, I saw a Hitomi from Escaflowne cel up for grabs. I didn't end up getting that one, since I won a much better one of her in the same outfit (my most expensive cel and most visited item in my gallery; I'm currently trying to get ahold of a copy of the BG from another RS member). I bought four cels within two days. Heh heh . . .

As for my collection, I'm fairly new at this, but I have about:
32 on RS
15 waiting to be uploaded
numerous sketches

I'm a huge fan of obscure anime, and Started collecting cels from series that I couldn't find fansubs of. Isn't that lame?!

Total cels in RS gallery: 165
cels coming soon: 27
cels yet to scan : 12-15 maybe?
backgrounds: 2
laser backgrounds : 3

and in case you wondered:
Total Jura Tripper count to date: 69

I've always like the old traditional anime starting in the 70's with the original Speed Racer and Kimba, but it was only when I saw some of the DVD imports at one of my local SF cult video stores that my interest really took off. The first was Magic Knight Rayearth and other CLAMP anime. Said I would pick up just one cel of each character. Of course that did not last. Pretty soon there were 3 cel books full of cels. Now the count is near 400+ cels and still growing although the number of cels on the market seems to be slowing down.

I just started out trying to get one cel for the heck of it to tie into my animation fix. I believe the first cel I ever purchased was either my Spawn, He-Man or a Macross 7 cel. After that the collection grew as I tried to get more cels from Macross/Robotech, then after watching Gundam I then wanted cels from the show. The escalation continues from there.

I knew about cels, but didn't think you could buy japanese anime ones until back in 2002 when a friend mentioned that he wished he could buy some he saw on ebay from Tenchi Muyo. I checked into ebay to see what he was talking about and flipped. My first purchases were Tenchi Muyo (because I knew what they were) and Boogiepop Phantom (I didn't know anything about them but loved them!) My daughter loved cels too and especially wanted cute ones with little creatures like Ryo-oki, and we were off! We have over 1300 pieces of anime production art and growing. We have slowed down from our original buying pace since cels are becoming a bit scarce, but we have a whole lot of genga due, and 4 cels right now, including one that will break my previous spending limits.