anime-taro

Anime-Taro was the first cel dealer to have a lot of MCOG cels. It was insane when they updated with those MCOG cels, their server crashed there was so much demand. I managed to get a few awesome cels, but it was a few days before I knew if my order had gone thru.

Heh, I didn't use Taro much because it was a lot of hassle ordering Japanese Yen then mailing it off to pay for my orders. I think I made 2 orders and wanted more before it closed.

I've mentioned it on another thread somewhere that I still have the URL in my 'bookmarks' just for old times sake ;) http://db.anime-taro.com/db/taro/ LOL

This was before I even knew about cel forums and online galleries, I really like the way things have turned out now with RS, Anime Beta and the other prominent websites that cater for our hobbies.

I got my first cel from Anime Taro May 1998. If I'm remembering this correctly, I first spotted Anime Taro a few months earlier as a strictly Japanese language website. I couldn't figure out how to order anything from it (I could only stare at the cel images while a few collectors talked about the things they ordered from there). I and many others were pretty happy when Taro began accepting regular English orders.

I know in the early days (1998 at least) Taro used to post beforehand if and what they "probably" would upload that day. So a lot of us would stay up to all hours of the night waiting for those cels to get uploaded (and sometimes nothing got uploaded that night :P ). A lot of people were hitting their refresh button all night. Because Taro used the shopping cart system, the cels would disappear very quickly. I recall fondly when I stayed up to until 3AM waiting for a "Video Girl Ai" cel upload. I got two cels that night, but missed out on the third because I thought about it before ordering it (20 seconds). I should have hit the "Complete Your Order" button immediately.

Ah...those days were fun.

Weren't there Animanga threads involving people staying up all night waiting for the upload?

Collector B: I can't take this much longer. I have to go to work in five hours. >_<
Collector A: Must sleep...zzz
Collecting B: No wait!!! They're uploading! Wake Up!!
Collector A: zzz -_-

[quote]I recall fondly when I stayed up to until 3AM waiting for a "Video Girl Ai" cel upload. I got two cels that night, but missed out on the third because I thought about it before ordering it (20 seconds). I should have hit the "Complete Your Order" button immediately.[/quote]

HaHa I bet you lost it to Mark Geller.

Ahhh the days of staying up till all hours of the night in the hopes of snagging a treasure. It just doesn't feel the same with the museum upadates. Execpt perhaps that week and a half period Wolf's Rain Sketches started popping up........ I slept with my lap top and when I got secret wind of an update, well I could always sleep at work.

[quote]HaHa I bet you lost it to Mark Geller. [/quote]

Heh...yeah, that's who it was alright. ^_^

Those were fun days back then. Cel collecting was very exciting. I could expect to run into nice artwork that I wanted badly on a regular basis.

Now...that brand of cel/sketch excitement doesn't happen very often (maybe twice a year). :(

Cels and sketches may disappear, but my Taro cel memories will last a lifetime! ^_^