Hello all,
I'm going to try and shed some light on a few of the things talked about here.
Most of the older online galleries were made before good cheap web software was available and there for they are kind of lowtech in the way they work, And most of the owners have not changed to newer software, Whats the old saying if it works don't fix it?
I think this is why the sites look so old school and are out of date in the way they work.
And I'm sure a few of them are just to lazy to update with the new stuff as rescanning hundreds of and or thousands of cels can be a pain to do as most of you guys know.
I being a old school animation collector from way back I can remember not having web sites to go to and having to call on the phone to find out what galleries had in stock and waiting for color copies to be sent in the mail to look at, This could take a few weeks sometimes.
As for prices the animation art from US galleries are priced kind of like new cars are and other sales, what I am trying to say is prices are set up old school like with 3 prices, Retail,Below retail and Wholesale and some even have a fourth price of what they payed for it or cost to them.
I have found if you get to know the dealers you can get better prices also you can get better prices if you buy in lots or buy more often from them.
Most of the dealers selling cels on ebay for real cheap prices have got them in huge lots and have sat on them for years in the hopes of making a killing on them, But as most of you know selling on ebay can be a real crap shoot if you try to list huge amounts of artwork from the same show the prices go way down, So some of the dealers selling real cheap are trying to get some of there money back for there stock and they will sell for only a few bucks each over what they paid for them in huge lots.
It is sad and brings the prices down on all but the older shows.
There is more art available from anime shows because they saved more stuff from there shows because they saw what animation art was going for in the U.S. in the late 70s and early 80s and had the forthought to save the artwork, But like most things if there are more of them the prices go down bigtime, this is why most anime art is cheaper than U.S. stuff.
Alot of U.S. stuff was thrown away or destroyed years ago when prices were not high enough to sell them and it cost more to store them than to just throw them away, I have seen truck loads of animation art from disney burned in huge pits and destroyed in shreaders and the paint cleaned off of them to reuse the cel for other shows.
This is why most of the older shows cels from the U.S. can go for some crazy prices, This is also why some of the anime cels go for huge prices also, some of the studios in Japan will only release a few items from each scene to keep the prices higher, I think this was smart of them from the stand point of keeping there product in demand and there prices higher.
I myself have a few whole movies and TV shows I bought years ago and have stored them for the future, I was of the mind that in the future the prices would go up also because of all the new CG stuff that was coming out at the time I got them. If any of you guys have a chance to buy huge lots for very good prices go for it because in about 10 years most of this stuff will be gone and put into collections and the prices will go though the moon, But you must be very smart in how you sell them off in the future to keep the prices at a higher level, Only release a few a year and if someone else has the same stuff try not to sell them at the same time because this will flood the market and bring the prices down realy fast, some sellers will try to cut your throat on the prices to outsell you on ebay,be very careful of who you sell to in lots and in bulk and try to setup a price that both of you can make some money off of and not kill each other but keep it low enough for collectors.
There are still huge amounts of cel art in storage around the world that folks are sitting on so deals are still to be found if you keep looking and have the money when you find them.
I would like to say in closing that all collectors be they anime or animation are the same all over the world and if you treat them nice they will be happy with you and a happy person is a person that will come back and buy from you in the future.
I treat all of my buyers the same and if a little bit of info about the subject is needed, I don't mind spending time sharing what I know about animation/anime art because a informed buyer is a good buyer and will come back.
Sorry for the rant but I thought I would ring in and share what I know and help some of the new folks to the scene understand a little about what happens in this field of collecting animation/anime.
This is a very good subject to talk about so I would ask anyone that has insite in this subject to share with all of us, Knowledge is power and the more we know the better this hobby is for all of us so post away and share the wealth of knowledge that I know is here in the minds of everyone.
Roy
E: don't take offense; nothing was meant negatively towards the good intentions of the ogirinal thread; I just think it was a bit wrong headed.
Roy: The older sites don't have much excuse for being as bad as they are. Gremlin's site has been around for at least 7 years, and while Gremlin suffers from some of the same pitfalls as the other traditional galleries, their website has been a model of sensible organization and correct updating of information. I started making my own web pages in 1994, and there's no reason for online galleries to not be able to have good looking daily-updated-by-hand sites, especially the traditional galleries who have such little turnover in their stock (Gremlin still has plenty of material on their site that was there when I purchased something from them 7 or so years ago).
As to your observations on the economics of the hobby, I'd say you're encouraging dangerous behavior. Speculation in collectibles markets tends to lead to crashes in the market at issue. A handful of individuals speculating on an eventual upturn in the cel market who then hoard cels for later sale is not an especially dangerous situation for the overall market. The individuals are subject to risk by their behavior, and if they're big enough players in the market their ruination could affect the overall market (looming bankruptcy of a major supplier would tend to lead to a gush of material on the market, leading to an overall price crash, leading to more bankrupt suppliers, leading to a bigger gush, etc.), but the animation market is diffuse enough to probably be insulated from that.
If lots of people start speculatively buying (and they're in it for the money), however, the speculators will tend to be closely attuned to market changes, hoping for quick upturns to justify their investments. There are two possible issues here:
One, when there is a sudden price downturn when someone needs to clear out large amounts of stock, lots of speculative buyers will tend to be involved in trying to sell off their stock, worsening the problem. Large numbers of speculators will tend to have smaller stocks; this is where the problem comes in. Speculators will tend to write off their investments. Now, two bad possibilities can come from this; one is that a lot of material is going to go out of the hobby as it is locked up in bankruptcy or simple retreat from the hobby (look at the comic book market; there was vast overproduction on the parts of the companies, so the glut of comics from the early '90s isn't rare, but there are tremendous amounts of comic books bought by people speculating that are locked up in collections of speculators; with animation art, that would mean lots of unique material taken off the market, even if someone values the piece more than the inert speculator; in other words, it creates an inefficient market due in part to the informational barriers created by speculation that creates hoards of material the holder cannot effectively communicate the existence of). Alternately, the materials might all end up filtering into a single large buyer, returning the hobby to a handful of sellers, and the ugly old days when galleries completely controlled the market, but without they themselves being controlled by the studios. An even worse outcome is that a lot of collectors will have been burned in the crash; people who would have had a normal collecting track will end up being sickened by the hobby, and will drop out.
Two: speculation tends to lead towards rampant speculation, and rampant speculation tends to create an upturn in prices before there is a crash. As speculators buy up material, material available to non-speculators drops off, raising collector prices, leading to speculators being willing to spend more, etc. So, while this tends to lead towards a real world price correction/crash, speculators will tend to assume an unrealistic baseline value of the materials they've bought, vastly increasing the amount people in the hobby for fun have to spend on the specific art that is being hoarded, or else lock up art in the hands of speculators with unrealistic expectations.
eBay significantly alters how likely these things are to happen; when individual collectors can connect easily to each other, they can create a more efficient market. Look for example at OPCs that began life in the Disney or WB Studio Stores (or their affiliated independent galleries). They generally sell on eBay for a fraction of the prices they originally sold for. Interestingly, when traditional galleries try to sell similar cels on eBay, they tend to have them at full gallery price (which has remained stable, increasing a little bit over time in absolute dollars, but probably going down a bit in adjusted value), and rarely sell them. This says to me that when people in it for the business get ahold of things, their perception of value remains at close to the highest level they see, whether or not an efficient market dictates otherwise. The prices seen on the galleries in the original message of this thread are fine examples of this.
The general rule in collectable markets should be "buy what you like". Big seller speculation hurts supply and raises costs for buyers, but as long as that kind of speculation doesn't run too wide (amongst speculators) or deep (in any given speculator, in amount or time) that's an acceptable cost for encouraging people to source material in the first place. Buyers need to punish sellers who speculate too deeply by not buying from them when possible (difficult in a monopoly situation), however, or else speculation will tend to increase and deeply harm the market. If a seller knows another seller is engaging in large scale hoarding, they should bring all their market forces to bear against the other seller because they're threatening the long term stability and survivability of the market.
