Am I the only other person here who thinks this is absurd? $200 for a cel where the seller will only provide a 3 inch by 3 inch image is rather ridiculous. Do you all routinely buy expensive items on eBay when the photos are fuzzy and horrid? I know I don't. You can definitely get an idea of line fading from a small image, but damage .... maybe not. Paint loss? Maybe not.
I've been asked for larger scans for less expensive cels, and will gladly provide those scans as long as I feel the buyer isn't wasting my time. When I give a larger scan, I generally send an un-retouched image (no cropping, no filters to clean up the image, nothing, just raw scanner crappiness -- admittedly, my scanner produces pretty darned good raw scans
).
A great many of my images on my web sites are small -- I do that to keep the amount of space and bandwidth my site uses to a minimum. My site protects my images against hotlinkers and that's about all I care. I hate hotlinkers because they aren't just stealing my images, they're stealing my site bandwidth, which costs me extra money if I use too much. Image thieves, though? I could care less. You want to make a fan cel of one of my cels? Go for it. If they try to sell it as the real deal, well... that's another issue entirely (and, really, you don't need a scan of the real cel to do it, either!).
So yeah. I'm sorry.... but I think a 3" x 3" image size limit for a $200 cel is craptacular. Do they do the same thing for cels they want $500 for? $1k? Yikes! If you want to protect your image, watermark it. But if I were the interested buyer... I'd tell the seller that he or she can keep their cel, and I'll keep my money.
