Have you ever been scammed on a cel?

Blaster · Post by **Blaster** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 6:11 am

Well, I feel like a real goose. -_-

I bought a cel from YJ a few weeks ago, and after I received it just the other day, I scanned it into my computer, and sort of left it for a few days. I came back to it tonight, to do the usual clean-up on it (removing dust specks, etc from my scanner) and as I was doing it, I looked at the image a bit closer. I comapred it to the screencap I'd taken, and realised that I'd been had.

Turns out there are a few subtle differences (a couple of which were easy to miss from the auction picture) between my cel and the screencap. I can't believe I was fooled so easily.

Before bidding, I (thought) I checked the auction picture against the screencap pretty well - I looked for the shadow shapes, and other shadings and they seemed to match up well enough. The cel had a number on it, and the cel itself isn't like it was from Evangelian of AMG or something popular where there are many fakes being sold as genuine items. The seller had 700 positive feedback, with no negatives. So I figured "sweet" and placed my bid.

$390 later I have a fake cel and I'm really annoyed at myself for falling for it, and also because I passed up other artwork to pay for this one

I must admit, the artist did a good job of making it look old. The lines show some fading - like you would expect to see on a cel this old.

Anyway, the whole point to this post was to see if anyone else here had bought artwork they thought was genuine, but in reality wasn't - and how you felt when you found out - cause I'm feeling pretty low at the moment

Nene · Post by **Nene** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 8:41 am

Aww sorry to hear about that. >.<

I don't think I've had anything like that happen but there is still the case of the cel I bought on YJ that's not arrived after 38 days. Starting to believe I was had on that one and that cost me a couple of hundred dollars.

Try not to feel too bad and just chalk it down to experience. ^_^

Post by **JWR** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 9:02 am

The only time I had a simular problem involved a Mandarake auction years ago in which the cel image shown had been photoshopped and the cel it's self when it arrived turned out to be in terrible condition.

star-phoenix · Post by **star-phoenix** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 9:17 am

Don't the studios usually go back and digitally enhance the cels with light effects (or whatever) after the cels are scanned in? I have a cel that also seemed "questionable", but when I sat down and looked at the DVD, ithey said that it was digitally enhanced for the DVD released, "Digitally re-mastered". Do you think this might have happened?

Can you show a picture of the cel in question so we can all look at it? I can guarantee you that people on this board are phenomenal at telling fake from real. Beta members have helped me so many times before.

I one time paid $400 for a cel from Mandarake that they said was original production (and even e-mailed me), but it turned out to be a reproduction posing as an original, and Beta members were the ones who notified me of the situation. Otherwise, they would have completely gotten away with it because the sellers never said a word about the error to me.

Cordelia · Post by **Cordelia** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 9:36 am

Hi, sorry to hear abt your predicament. I agree with star-phoenix that you shd let us haf a look. Sometimes the animation on screen moves so fast that its hard to capture the matching scene.

And there are scenes that were redone. e.g one of my VPM cel did not appear in my early asian release video but was in the later DVD version. The studio actually redrew the whole scene so there are 2 versions of cels for it.

So far I've had juz 2 bad experiences. One was a cel from Mandarake bought a long time ago, turned out to have severe paint loss that did not show up in the rather small pic. Still, you'd expect the seller to have the decency to mention something as glaring as that. To be fair, Mandarake is very descriptive abt the condition of their cels now ( a little too zealous)... The other was an ebay seller who sold a cel with copy, unmatching bg as one with original, matching bg

metheus · Post by **metheus** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 9:42 am

Been ripped off on other things but for the most part I've been lucky with cels. I've had plenty show up in conditions that looked a lot different than the photo though -_-!

The closest to a scam I've encountered was in my early days of collecting while I was broke college student. I spent a lot of time finding a specific character/cel that I could afford ($40 or less). When my cel showed up, it was a sequence mate, one of the really poor in-between varieties.

darksuzaku · Post by **darksuzaku** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 10:18 am

There's also cels with errors, for example using a different shade of the color that was expected to be used.

Many times the studio would just wash the acetate and reuse it, but there are also situations where the cels are not destroyed, and just not used in the final recording.

lcatino · Post by **lcatino** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 10:25 am

Sorry to hear that happened to you.

I have yet to purchase a fake cel, although If it's done really well, I'm not sure I would be able to tell the difference.

I would also like to see the cel in question. It may help other people identify fraudulent merchandise.

graymouser · Post by **graymouser** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 11:04 am

The main time for me was buying a cel and never having it arrive. There have been a couple of times where the "matching" bg didn't, but most of those I caught and just decided to buy anyways. Unfortunately, when buying at a con or in rushing to be the first to buy off a dealer update, there is no time or practical way to confirm everything.

I have had a few scares though. There have been a couple of times I thought I knew where the cel came from, but when I double checked they were not there. Here is an example from Fushigi Yuugi.

Chiriko only appears for a short time in non-pastel colors in the TV show. When I could not find it, I thought I had been scammed. Since I liked the image, I kept the cel anyways. It wasn't until 2 years later when I was going through the OVA for another cel when I found the correct scene. I had totally forgotten that there was a brief flashback scene in one of the OVAs where Chiriko was painted in the same solid colors as his initial TV appearance.

I also have 4 Mirage of Blaze bgs and 1 Last Unicorn bg that were painted for the shows but never made it into the final version. All of the bgs came from very reliable sources. The explanations are in my gallery.

Here is the MOB bgs - at the bottom of the page
http://itamejihada.net/backgrounds/mob/mob.tv13.5.html

Here is the LU bg
http://itamejihada.net/backgrounds/lu/lu1c.html

I have also had a couple of VPM cels that I could not match with screencaps. I have seen sequence-mates sold of them, so I know they were real. (who would bother to make an entire sequence of fakes from a relatively inexpensive show/sequence?) Like someone else said with their VPM cel, they were either missing correction layers (I strongly suspect this in one of them) or were edited out somewhere down the line.

I guess I will repeat what other people have stated. Show us the image. True scams are pretty rare. Most of the time there is another explanation.

miz ducky · Post by **miz ducky** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 11:41 am

It is also possible that, if the cel in question is actually a fake, it might have also fooled the previous owner.
They might not have looked as closely as you did.

Blaster · Post by **Blaster** » Sat Jun 14, 2008 2:18 am

okey-dokey peoples...

Here is the cel in question. It is a pan cel and Natsumi's body doesn't move at all (the camera pans from bottom to top) and so it is A1 End.

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b251/ ... rrison.jpg

The top layer cel (B1 - Natsumi's mouth and eyes) doesn't appear in the episode at all either - though her expression does change (over 3 cels I think)

darksuzaku · Post by **darksuzaku** » Sat Jun 14, 2008 6:00 am

uuuf, unfortunately it seems this time it's a fan cel

Moop · Post by **Moop** » Sat Jun 14, 2008 7:33 am

^ Agreed. (And aside from all the differences you've circled, there are at least seven others in the hair, as well.)

What deputy do you use? Some of them will contact the seller for you if there's a problem. As Ducky pointed out, the person you bought it from might not have even been aware that they were peddling a fan cel.

Blaster · Post by **Blaster** » Sat Jun 14, 2008 8:12 am

Yeah, I thought so.

Moop - I did think about that, but ther seller was auctioning it for a friend, so he was probably unaware also. And with over 700 positive feedback with no negative's, I don't want to cause any trouble. It's pretty much all my fault anyway - I should've looked at the picture more closely. I just got excited at having a chance to own a cel like this from the YUA mini specials. Ahh, well... lesson learned ay?

Money can always be re-earned, right? The disappointment will take a bit longer to get over though, heh

Moop · Post by **Moop** » Sat Jun 14, 2008 8:35 am

Obviously I wouldn't recommend doing something that makes you uncomfortable, but just so you're aware, my dep didn't hesitate to contact the seller for me when I received a cel that had damage which was not described in the auction. (Come to think of it, maybe that counts as 'scammed'...? After a huge bid war, I blew $700 on a cel into which the red background had bled so much that in person, the character looked as though he had a case of very pale measles.

)

If you're at fault for not seeing the problem before you bid, then the seller is at least as much at fault for not seeing it before they sold. In his position, I would gladly give a refund...so I'd say there's no harm in at least trying, is there? Writing a note to your deputy would only take a couple of minutes, and the worst you can get is a 'no'.

Either way you decide, though, I'm sorry for the harsh lesson learned. But you never know - maybe the real thing will find its way into your collection one day. Stranger things have happened in this hobby.