How do you get money to buy cels/sketches?

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How do you get money to buy cels/sketches?

I work, and use part of my salary.
18
56%
I save, then use my savings.
7
22%
I use my credit card.
0
No votes
I sell art I already have, or open my collection for offers.
2
6%
I buy first, then worry about the money.
3
9%
Other (explain in a post).
2
6%
 
Total votes: 32

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sensei
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How do you get money to buy cels/sketches?

Post by sensei »

Awfully quiet, so it's time to resurrect an interesting thread from 2002. Obtaining animation art for many collectors can become a kind of drug-like "high," and a lot of times the cash to service this high can be a problem. Maybe not so much for the present Betarians as it was when there were a lot of young, enthusiastic collectors, but still ...

I learned to set aside a budget from my salary and stick to it, regardless of what tempting beauties came along when it was depleted.
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Drac of the Sharp Smiles
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Re: How do you get money to buy cels/sketches?

Post by Drac of the Sharp Smiles »

I was kind of torn between options 1 or 2.... They're almost the same thing, really. However, I chose the second option since I don't particularly take a set amount from my paycheck and earmark it for cels. I save my money and when something comes up, it is treated like any other unnecessary indulgence: I decide how much I can (or want to) afford to spend based on what I have saved and current financial obligations. ^_^
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Re: How do you get money to buy cels/sketches?

Post by jcaliff »

I chose option 1. While I don't have a part of my salary set aside just for cels, when I do want to buy something I typically have enough not to worry about it. I've been buying less and less the past few years, and most of what I buy is cheap anyway. :)
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Re: How do you get money to buy cels/sketches?

Post by cutiebunny »

This is difficult for me to define because so much of what I collect, the original sketches drawn by artists, are obtained in a variety of ways, using a variety of different means.

When I exclusively collected cels, I would have said that I work a lot of overtime shifts and if I see something on an auction site and win it, I pay for it by either taking it from my savings or putting it on my card to generate activity on the card as I'm a pretty thrifty person otherwise. While I still buy items on auction sites from time to time using money I've earned through overtime/holiday/night pay, the bulk of my collection in the past couple of years has come from the conventions I attend. If a convention is local, it's relatively cheap for me to attend. For example, I went to YaoiCon this past weekend, and with the VIP admission price and a gift card for the artist, I spent $170 total for all three days, including toll fees, parking and gas. Compared to Anime Expo, where a decent, close by hotel alone can run $1K+ for the five days I'll stay in the area, local cons are cheap. However, unlike the local cons, I can easily recoup some of my travel expenditures going to conventions that require an overnight stay. I share rooms with friends or people that I meet through convention forums, so the $1K fee is usually split between 4-5 other people and then I spend no more than about 1 night's lodging to stay at AX. In this case, I get the money to buy artwork by networking. I know some people won't do this because they're worried that one of their roommates will run off with all their stuff, but I've never had this problem. Usually, by stating that you go to bed early and keeping your fees reasonable by not stuffing your room with 15 people, you keep most of the party element away. I've also used reward points from hotel reward programs and the ilk towards convention travel.

I admit that sometimes I feel a nice rush on Yahoo Auctions, but I usually don't feel that rush when I win something at a convention charity auction. I'm a cautious bidder and the second I feel that something could not be sold for what I would pay for it, I back off completely. Not that I intend to sell anything I win, but I always like to get a good deal, especially if its not from a series or artist that I'm obsessed with. It used to be that you could win items at charity auctions and because they would never send you documentation, you could write off the entire purchase on your taxes, and then use this money towards your next con (though sometimes this still occurs..). But as more conventions are registering themselves as 501(c)(6) charities, meaning that you can't write off the purchase and they're in the same deduction category as the NFL, this avenue is closed. Some conventions, like AX, fall under this category, so when I bid at AX, I take this into account and bid far more conservatively. Other conventions, like SakuraCon, list the value of the artwork you bought as mere pittance. True story - At SakuraCon 2013, my friend won one of the Toshihiro Kawamoto original sketches for a couple thousand dollars. I picked up a figurine set of four characters from Tiger & Bunny for $100 at that same auction. SakuraCon sent him a letter stating that the sketch he purchased was worth $40. My letter for the toy set listed their retail price at $80. We both had a really good laugh over that.

TL;DR - In addition to paying for art by working more and paying for items through savings/credit cards, I also use reward points, tax write offs and networking transactions to pay for art.
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Re: How do you get money to buy cels/sketches?

Post by KinoLRB »

I answered 1, but I guess in the beginning of my collecting phase I would use my savings. My purchases were generally more spontaneous back then. Now, most of my purchases are planned at least a few weeks ahead of time with a predetermined spending limit.

I also have a change jar on my dresser (well, actually, an awesome EVA Asuka bank that counts in yen) that is slowly but surely accumulating into a decent little cel fund. :)
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Re: How do you get money to buy cels/sketches?

Post by sensei »

Interesting. I remember threads from not that long ago, in which people admitted to using food or medical money for impulse buys, stealing petty cash from parents, going deeply into credit card debt, etc., in way that even they conceded indicated a kind of addiction.

But "addiction" is often used as a buzz word, "buying something that a person who considers himself or herself a moral judge considers trivial or a waste of money." One could say the same of people who put thousands of dollars into a collection of Star Wars paraphernalia, or the poor fellow who invested his savings in collectable Beanie Babies when they were hot and sold at a major loss when the collecting craze passed. You could say that any of us is an "addict" in that sense -- but then there are stamp and comic book collectors who are obsessive about rarity, significance, and condition, though both of these are now considered "normal" types of collecting.

What is striking so far is that it seems that the anime art collectors' base does seem to have settled down to a sustainable pace of collecting. I don't see any more the "binge and sell" cycles among collectors, who would dip heavily into their debt resources to get a "wishlist" and find themselves selling previous wishlists to make up the deficit. So the behavior is less typical of "addiction" in this sense. That's to be expected as many young people give up anime art collecting as their life situation evolves, and those who don't fit the activity into many other things that heads of households have to manage.

And, yes, I admit that it's not always clear whether I'm buying out of current funds or out of savings. I do give up auction browsing for Lent, and that allows for a somewhat richer set of purchases after Easter. But I chose #1 as my primary habit. I should add that, these days, I split this budget allowance between new items and the archival supplies needed to keep the old ones in good condition. New bags are starting to outcost new cels, in other words.
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Re: How do you get money to buy cels/sketches?

Post by lunacels »

This is an interesting topic!

It was harder years ago, in the late 1990s-early 2000s, because I was still a college student and then in residency. At the time, I would save money from working but I will admit to having resorted to credit cards for wishlists.

These days, I don't carry credit card debt, and instead limit my purchases to a reasonable limit from my salary. Thankfully I am far enough along in my career now that cels don't take as big a bite out of my expenses (relatively speaking) as they used to when I was a student. What I used to think of as an expensive cel now is pretty much equivalent to a couple of dinners out. It also helps probably that there seem to be far fewer cels out there from the limited series I collect (primarily just Sailor Moon). There seem to be very limited places to source cels now, actually.

Cel collecting has always come in waves for me, interspersed with periods of inactivity. So now, when one or two cels come along that spark my interest, the money spent is generally not a big concern.
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Re: How do you get money to buy cels/sketches?

Post by ReiTheJelly »

I guess I fall into the "I use part of my salary" category. But honestly, I haven't bought much production artwork since I landed a well-paying job.
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Re: How do you get money to buy cels/sketches?

Post by xiaolungbao »

Does doing tricks count? No? Serially, I sell unneeded items online. The key is you gotta start small. I have sisters and geez they are spenders! Ha, better make a ton more money in their careers, or marry into wealth b/c they don't have any right now (can't imagine how they will ever retire). Anyways I sell lots of cool stuff that they lose interest in all the time and they feel being frugal or reselling is so beneath them. Not really. So every few month there are new old things available for me to sell. So if you got spendy siblings, family and friends, ask for them for stuff they do not value or want and sell it for spending money or even money to add to pay down your debts.
Last edited by xiaolungbao on Wed Jul 26, 2017 12:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: How do you get money to buy cels/sketches?

Post by sletia »

All of the above! LOL.
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Re: How do you get money to buy cels/sketches?

Post by Ginta »

I spent money I shouldn't have been spending from my paychecks.
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Re: How do you get money to buy cels/sketches?

Post by kamidake »

Back when I first started collecting, I was doing more of the buy first, figure out the money later. Mostly because I was a poor college student with limited income, and also it was during the height of cel collecting, so if I don't snatch something right then and there, it'd be gone. ^^; But now I get to do more of the spending my salary, thanks to a steady decent paying job. :)
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Re: How do you get money to buy cels/sketches?

Post by xiaolungbao »

Just realized with the decrease in cel inventory I have not bought much in the last five years. Probably b/c I believe in quality over quantity. So for now I just raise money by selling items and sometimes from diverting profits from using options and dividend portfolio. Has anyone done this too?
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