In July 2006, I purchased a cel of the climax of the early-1980s TV series “Aura Battler Dunbine”. After purchasing the cel with some other items, it was suddenly removed from my order and then later re-listed as available on the site. After asking if it was in stock or not, I was told it was, it was added back onto my purchase, and I was sent the piece.
When the cel came, it was affixed to two ancient, gruesome sheets of paper. And it wasn’t the paint from the cel that kept it stuck to the paper; instead, it was a long strip of tape holding the two paper sheets together, which had long ago burned through them, and was now either keeping the paper and paint stuck, or had eaten through the paint, completely removing it from the cel and transferring it to the tape’s own surface. You can’t exactly see this in the dealer’s image, because the tape is up against the back of the cel.
On top of this, there was mold. In the picture above, you can see what looks like dirt on the left, and a large black area below the two figures where the mold had eaten through the paper and had caused it to shred. On Sho Zama’s (the dark haired guy) arm you can see small discolored sections. This is where the fungus had gone through the paint, and was growing between the paint layer and the plastic.
Not only was it a real shame that this great scene from an influential anime was turning into garbage right in front of me, but, it being covered in living plant matter, I didn’t exactly want to store it with the rest of my collection. So, I took it to S/R Labs on September 8, 2006.
Two years, six months, twenty-one days, and almost $300 later:
Sho and Bern will now continue to be locked in the classic struggle between good and evil …
for many years to come.
* Edited first to add a missing word.
** Edited a second time because, except for the first line, the whole post disappeared.
*** Edited a third time because I misspelled disappeared.
