What's the most $$ you spent on a cel?

I have just graduated from my $150 limit to $350. Though I did spend $500 on one of my sets of Bleach Sketches.

$600 was the most expensive... I think.

This thread is so very interesting ^_^ I would have to add the most I've ever spent would be $750 on my Makoto (SM) in her black dress. The second would definately be the one of Yue and Toya from THE SCENE (CCS) After that it tends to run in the $50-$150 range.

My highest price was $900 for a sketch of San from Mononoke Hime. (It came with a guarantee of authenticity too, incidentally.) There are some cels or sketches that I really like once I see them in person. I mean, really really like. Fortunately, this sketch is one of those, so I haven't spent the past two years begrudging the amount I spent for it.


Runners up are an oversize rilezu of Maya from Tenjou Tenge and a cel of Rei from Evangelion.

I jumped this post at 100 =)

I think more than the most money, the biggest surprise was my 3rd cel ever that I bought at Nagoya Mandarake in Japan for $60 years ago, before I really knew what anime cels were, and not knowing what the cost of a rare DBZ cel "dream sequence" was going for at that time, put it up for auction because I stumbled across the ebay site online. The next morning I woke up to dozens of emails and questions in my webmail with collectors begging me to sell it to them.
I was scared!! (true story)... I kinda panicked and sold it to the first nice person that had the best offer (that I thought was ridiculously unbelievable good at the time) and immediate payment, although I still had two days to go on the auction, I stopped it immediately. I ended up selling the cel for about a third of what I could have gotten for it, and at some time soon after the auction, I saw a sister cel on a dealers site, going for $2,500!! And somebody bought it! lol..

I was happy though, because I made a friend (the buyer) that was so overjoyed that I sold it to her for a "great price", and at the same time a light bulb went off in my head (like Tweety) that this cel business stuff could be fun. And it was!! I bought so many excellent cels for barely a fraction of what they went for on the open market. That is until Japanese began to see that foreign market open up.

Think back 8 years ago or more... Man, that was when cel collecting was truly fun and rocking.. so much variety, so much quality..

I was so lucky, that I lived in Japan at the time. I feel very fortunate, as I admire you trooper hanging in there and still at it.