Auction End High Prices

[Rekka Alexiel]

I'm witnessing an interesting phoenamonon happening with recent Mandarake auctions, I was wondering if anyone might know a reason for it.

I typically collect from pretty obscure shows. Usually when items appear on YJ there is little to no competition and prices stay relatively reasonable.

However, there has been some pretty active bidding going on over at the Mandy auctions, several going so high I have to bail or make priorities between items.

I'm wondering why there are more bid wars over on Mandy whereas there is very little on YJ. Any ideas? The only thing u can think of is that Mandy might be more easily accessible to international bidders, whereas on YJ most ppl will not ship overseas.

What do you think?

[teggacat]

yeah I wondered about that too, I've recently seen quite a few cels from a certain series that
always makes me think of you and they've been bringing some decent money on
Mandy

[GuyvarIII]

Mandarake is certainly friendlier to international buyers then YJ; but, I also think the cels on Mandarake are more visible in general to collectors than those on Yahoo Japan.

Because, overall, there are fewer cels on Mandarake than Yahoo Japan, I think it’s easier to view all the cels currently up for auction on Mandarake at any given time. And, since it's not easily apparent on Mandarake how to search for specific shows, collectors typically just look at all the cels/sketches; so each item is more visible to a larger group of people. While browsing, it’s easy to notice if there are suddenly great looking cels from a show you wouldn’t have necessarily looked for by name.

If you are a collector of an obscure anime, and Mandarake suddenly puts up a bunch of cels from what you’re looking for, and you find out about it, you’re more likely to keep an eye on their auctions to see if they’ll put up more items from that anime. The number of these fans hunting for the previously hard to find show will increase with each new set of auctions. And, as each set of these auctions ends, the collectors will become more desperate to get what they can before Mandarake’s supply of that show runs out, or until the cel fanatics run out of money.

It hasn’t slipped my notice, though, that a bidding war only needs two desperate collectors to go nuts. So, on either Yahoo Japan or Mandarake, you can just be unlucky enough to be bidding against one super-fan who will not give up, and at that moment you’re both fighting and snarling over the same thing.


Life is hard being a cel collector.

p.s., After 16 years (and 41 bids), I finally saw and actually won a cel from Doomed Megapolis (Teito Monogatari)
...on Mandy of course!

[cscratch]

Definitely agree with everything that's been said here already!

I wonder of some of it has to do with Mandy being a trusted source as well since some the higher profile shows seem to have their share of fancels floating around touted as originals.

[ReiTheJelly]

I'm going to second Guyvar's hypothesis: Mandarake has so few cels for sale at any given time that it's easier for collectors to notice a piece which will interest them, instead of having to search Y!J (sometimes using multiple search entries to cover all possibilities). Also, I think there is just something about Mandarake which incites higher bidding - maybe it's seeing all the really high end Ghibli stuff next to 'cheaper' items? Inflation due to proximity?

[GoalieZero]

Agree with all above. Mandarake is smart in their supply and demand, they plan what they auction and when they auction it to make sure highly sought shows aren't oversaturated on their market. This keeps demand and bidding high. YJ and eBay's drawback is that there's no control over the amount of cels for a particular show at one time, there could be a 100 or 1, so you can get great deals (minus the hassle of deputies) or go bone dry for awhile. It's a collector's hobby, so it can be dog eat dog sometimes! : )

[sensei]

It is true that Mandarake can be a place where a browser can spot something from a series or movie that one hasn't collected and may not know even exists. If you have a collector's eye, all kinds of buzzers and bells may sound, even while you're asking "Wata no Kuni ..." what? I've made a number of memorable impulse bids for that reason, some of which have led to new collecting interests, especially in pre-1990 series, which is the area in which the site excels. The most recent (unopposed, thankfully) was for a cel from an anime widely reputed to have been the worst ever made. It surprises me that a cel in fact survives from it ... but anything can happen.