Cel Preservation

I shoulda looked at your gallery before I replied. I feel your pain about no scanner. In fact we both have cels from animegame. Did you get yours while he was holding the sale?

Yep! I felt so lucky, if it hadn't been for the sale I never would have been able to afford it. ^-^

I got two fancy "cel books" from an internet site before I realized that the local Ben Franklin crafts store stocked portfolios by the same company and of the same size. So long as the materials are certified archival (i.e., non-reactive) then I don't think it matters what you use. (And even if they're not certified archival, I would guess that it wouldn't matter if you keep your cels in the plastic envelopes they usually come in.)

From what I've heard the two essentials are that you should store cels standing upright rather than stacked on top of each other, and that you should keep them in a dark place. (I prop the cel books upright on the shelf of a closet that is closed 99.9% of the time.)

Concerning line fading: I framed the first two cels I got, using UV-resistant glass, and gave them to my daughter, who hung them on the wall of her room. One gets a fair amount of indirect light, and I've watched it closely for two full years now and not seen any detectable line fading.

On the other hand, I rescued a cel from a store brightly lit by fluorescent lights. It had been stored inside a cel book that was hung over a rail of some kind, and after I got it I could see that the lines on the bottom edge of the cel had definitely faded. I'd guess it matters where you hang the cel and what kind of light it gets.

Obviously none of my cels in the closet have changed visibly since I got them. But there's some folklore about how the lines interact with the paint so that they fade even in the dark. I've read how some collectors open up the plastic envelopes periodically so that the cels can breathe.

(Ring ring. Moshi moshi. Gomenasai, but do you have Prince Albert in the can? Why yes, sir. Well, let him out or he'll suffocate BWA HA HA HA HA HA!)

It is true that I have some cels where some lines that were painted over with flesh or brown seem to have gone from black to brown. But I don't know how they were displayed before I got them, so this might be a reaction to UV light, not the fault of the paint.

Ramblings of a Friday mind.