I should start by saying that I collect mostly cartoon (US) animation art and not much anime (even though I love a lot of anime as well
). I have pretty broad tastes and you'd be hard pressed to find a cartoon from the 80s/90s that I haven't seen. One of the many that I love is Freakazoid. It also happens to be one that, in the limited amount of time I've been collecting, hasn't come up very often and when it does is quite pricey.Well... a couple months ago I happened upon what looked like a great item:
The description was sparse to say the least and the pictures left a lot to be desired. I was immediately concerned that the logo in the bottom right corner looked faded and the whole thing looked flat. I should have trusted my gut but I WANTED it to be real and the auction was just about to end. I did the stupid thing and made the impulse buy for what would have been a (fairly) reasonable price.
A few days later I get it in the mail. It's not a cel... it's not a drawing... it's not production art of any kind. It's an image that has been printed on foam board and then glued to a low quality mat:
Ugh. I immediately contact the seller and (very politely) explain that the item is not as described, that it was probably a mistake, that I'd be happy to send the item back (at my expense), I just want my money back. The seller sends a very short message back simply saying that the item is as described, is production art, and no refunds will be offered. Thus I am forced to open a case with eBay.
eBay is normally pretty good about this stuff. However, when claiming an item is counterfeit, it is up to the buyer to prove that it is. I wracked my brain on how I could do that. Pictures don't do a very good job of proving whether something is or isn't production art... especially to an eBay caseworker who probably doesn't know anything about animation art. Then it hits me! I remembered something I bought years ago on Kickstarter... something that I never thought would actually be useful... a small, rubber lens that turns your phone's camera into a 15x microscope. With it, I was able to take super-close-up photos of the item, showing the actual printer ink lines on the foam board:
I wrote a detailed explanation with the above images as well as examples of what production art and the WB seal should look like. I won my case in a matter of hours... all thanks to a $10 phone lens.
Moral of the story: Trust your gut.
