I thought I would ring in on this one... Personally , I know my collection wouldn't be anywhere near as good as it is if it were not for the other guys collecting and displaying Transformers cels on RS. I do quite a bit of trading with these guys and I appreciate them and every deal we make. I try and watch for pieces for them and let them know when there is a new auction up on E-bay or when something of interest is happening in our little niche of collecting. They do the same for me. I don't know if this qualifies as "team collecting" but I do know it would be much harder to collect pieces if I were on my own in this hobby. We love you too Startyde!
I never really thought about this before...all the cels I have were from finding them myself...It would be nice to have another person keeping a look-out for cels...
lol, but I'm the only one out of all my friends who collects cels, and they could care less, nevermind look for cels for me...
*cries* so sad...
My husband looks out for how much I'm spending on cels...
I'm probably the only person on island that collects these things. I couldn't tell you how many times I've heard "Did you draw these?!"
When I start to explain, there's the confused look over "anime" not the same as "cartoons", followed by the glazed look when I get to what a cel is. I've pretty much given up, and just say "no".
I think my coworkers are hopelessly confused, except my boss. She actually watched Nightwalker and enjoyed it! But she couldn't get over Kenshin's voice being female, and didn't get through even the first episode of that, so I don't think I've forgiven her yet...;)
When I first started collecting cels, I did a lot of team collecting instinctively. I was drawn to other collectors that had personal galleries similar to my own (before RS days) with friends that collected the same popular series. But since those ancient days, I left the mainstream behind a long time ago, those bonds faded, and were replaced with similar off-beat collectors that also had or were developing niche collections like myself.
These collectors and collections that didn't necessarily have any one theme, of the same direction, cels, or series attracted me more. In this sense I've never felt freer or more alone to go my way. There are still very few Gunnm collectors out there, and that suits me just fine indeed. That's why you'll never see an Inuyasha, Sailor Moon, Naruto, or Dragonball, etc. cel on my site. I have nothing against those series, but they just don't fit my maverick prone personality. In the end, I think that is what I think collecting is about, is getting the most personally out of it. I am not very mainstream I guess.
In any case, we niche collectors usually watch out for each other and on occasion pass on a "heads-up display" of a possible unseen item, that may never be seen again, since our items tend to be harder to find and less common to run across. And the good thing is we pass them on with no feelings of loss or attrition.
However the draw back is that it is also easier to know who my rivals are over time, because the competition for niche cels in numbers is less, but fights can get bitter, intense, and butting heads on auctions or updates is very common. The dagger cuts just a little deeper in this case, when we lose, especially because we almost immediately know whom we lost to..we lose big. It is like dueling.. take ten paces... turn and fire!
Edited Aug 17 at 10:29 PM
