No turning back

[kageneko]

I knew I was lost when I decided I wanted a picture of my favorite villian after my first son was born. I know I was a collector from early on. I started with Hotwheels, coins and Garbage Pail Kid stickers that I posted all over my dresser in protest to the horrid cuteness of my cousins barbie and Cabbage Kids. Then came the various stuffed toys and eventuall a fancel of Of the Oni wearer from Samurai Troopers. I have stuck in my cel love ever since.

[Macron one]

Hmm...tricky question. Long before i actually started my collection, i had wanted to get some cels from my favourite series and characters.
It took me a very long time indeed to get around to purchasing the first cel, as i was spending most of my disposable income on my other collections (DVDs, manga, dakimakura covers, figures), of which anime DVDs was the main one. Only once my DVD collecting really started to slow down considerably and i was finding myself with money to spend on other things, did i decide to try buying some cels.

I initially went into cel collecting with a pretty straightforward strategy: buy up to 50 pieces from my very favorite series and up to 12 pieces from my lesser favorites. As such, i wasn't exactly intending to stick around indefinitely. I was planning to stop collecting once i had acquired a nice selection of good quality, representative pieces from my favourite shows. My first couple of cels and sketches made me exited about the hobby, but i didn't yet expect to continue my collection permanently at that point. As i gradually started picking up some really nice pieces from Nadesico, CCS and other series,i eventally simply realized that i didn't necessarily want to limit myself to any specific number of pieces. If i had to pinpoint a turning point, then my summer 2010 BWA purchases are probably what motivated me to continue collecting for the forseeable future. Mind you, i still wouldn't exactly say that there's no turning back. Something else might eventually catch my interest and make cel collecting less of a priority. I can't honestly predict if i'll be a collector for life, but i'm certainly sticking around for the time being.

[AerynAerie]

Well, for me...my hobbies seem to intertwine. ^_^;;
I started collecting random anime shows around 1998 when Sailor Moon appeared on Toonami and Bandai liscensed merchandise for the USA. Since then I sold off pretty much everything I used to collect except for GundamW. I started collecting Gundam Wing Merchandise back in 2000 when I begged my mom to buy me ALL of the Gundam Wing shirts released at JCPenny's. ^__^ All of which I still have. lol.
Since then I've expanded into Japanese merch of the show as well. So really I'm surprised I didn't know about cels until much much later. Actually my friend used to talk about cels all the time but I never connected the dots or realized exactly what a cel was. I snatched a sketch off of Ebay thinking it'd be pretty neat to have. Then some popped up on Ebay and I brought home my very first cel. I paid an arm and leg for it. Then I did research and expanded and ... well, I can't ever see letting them go.

[sugarcels]

I'd known about cels for YEARS before I started collecting them. I wasn't in the least bit tempted because all I ever saw was Looney Tunes and Disney stuff, and those cels are insanely expensive! I recall that my mom once gave me a cel catalog for some special store in the late 90s, and I looked at the price tags and was like, "Yeah, no." XD

I'd been warned that cel collecting was addictive and that one should avoid it at all costs. And I did... until 2004, when Shopping Mall Japan (then known as Anime Chaos) had a sale to clear out their inventory and focus on their deputy service. I picked up a Hime-chan no Ribbon and Tenshi ni Narumon cel, and it didn't stop there, obviously XD