Have you ever thrown away a cel?

[jcaliff]

When is a cel too damaged? I recently bought a set of cels. I knew in advance that a lot of them were bad, but there were basically two sets and one set (the reason I bought them) is fine. The second set, however, seems pretty much beyond salvaging, and I don't say that lightly.

The damaged set is a complete sequence, three layers from beginning to end (two bottom, five middle, and six front). It included a timing sheet, hand-drawn layout, genga, and douga for each cel. The paper seems like it's savable, but the cels are some of the most badly affected vinegar syndrome cases I've ever seen. They are completely warped and bubbly (warped top to bottom, about 80% of the cel), with areas that from a distance look silver, but close up have really intricate, almost fractal line patterns where the cel has degraded. The degraded areas are a circular area in the middle of the cel that takes up about 50% of the surface area. The smell is almost overwhelming.

I've currently separated the paper from plastic, and put them both in a completely different room from the rest of my collection. It's such a shame, since it's such a complete set. I'm thinking what I might do is scan the images from the cels, clean them up in gimp as best I can, and give them a respectful send off.

I've never considered actually throwing cels away before (not even this one), but these ones are so bad that I worry that they'll damage the rest of my collection. I've read sensei's posts about vinegar syndrome, and I've ordered some of that multichamber paper to put with the drawings at least, but I think the cels themselves are beyond that.

Does anyone else have any thoughts? Have you ever thrown away a cel that was just too damaged?

[sensei]

Briefly: Yes, I threw away a minor cel that came with a set that had a very obvious vinegar syndrome issue. It was not an important image and I didn't want to risk the health of others.

And I threw away several books of Tree of Palme cels that I got in a bad auction deal, where the seller had "salted" the lot with a few nice pieces then included a hundred or more totally unviewable items: partials, elbows, bacteria-like creatures swarming, etc. I saved some of the nicest, but finally needed the room in my closet.

Doing the final pack to get on the road to Rhode Island...

[Keropi]

I pulled apart two stuck Maison Ikkoku cel layers and ended up messing them up. I got so annoyed looking at them that I threw them away.

A character or two were underneath the top layer and I thought it would be better being able to see the characters on the lower layer. Pulling the layers apart wasn't such a good idea. Oh well.

[JWR]

If this is as you say a complete sequence then you might consider using it as a display on how cel animation works. Since it is not worth much in it's damaged condition you would not need to worry about light damage or acid free materials.

Once you put it together with with tags identifing layers, sequence numbers and info on how they are made (maybe showing one backside up to show how they are made) donate it to a school or library and write it off on your taxes