Changing Tides

[KinoLRB]

I think its fair to say that most of us have gone through times where we change our collecting habits. Whether it be the transition in favoring sketches over cels, or a shift in emphasis from one series to another, most of us have at some point experienced a change in taste in terms of what we collect. For instance, I never thought I would take an interest in Detective Conan, but now it's my #1 focus in collecting, even over Evangelion and Kino's Journey, my two all time faves. I troll for artwork on a thrice daily basis.

I was wondering what kind of profound shifts other collectors have experienced. Share your stories.

[sensei]

In my (almost) 17 years, I've certainly gone through a number of big shifts. I'd have to call out these:

[*]Starting about 2004 a steadily increasing interest in sketch art vs. cel art. Some early purchases made me aware of the importance of individual animators in creating the "feel" of certain scenes, and so for some series (especially Magic Knight Rayearth and Hyper Police) I began with sketch art and only later added cels.
[*] In 2006 a big step away from my original collecting focuses, CCS and TNN, and developing a much more eclectic approach to choosing titles to collect, including a wider range of cel-based art and a growing number of CGI-based series (Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, Inuyasha (ep. 100 onward), NieA_7, Saiyuki. That eventually developed into very focused collecting efforts devoted to Rozen Maiden and Asatte no Houkou.
[*]An emerging interest in "first gen." anime, starting with a few cels from Grimm's Classic Fairy Tales in 2006 but taking off in 2011 when I became interested in the 1973 series Microid S. These two shifts led to the current three-way division of my gallery (Golden Age, Classic Cels, CGI) in 2013.

It's interesting to think about how my auction browsing habits have shifted. There are some searches that I've had up for years without any luck -- and then one day ... And others that show me art similar to that I've collected before, but without getting me to hit that "bid now" button. Overall, I'd say that I'm much less "obsessed" by the thrill of the hunt, and so my Lenten abstinence from auction browsing is much less of a penance than it was ten years ago. (I use the time to change bags and renew acquaintances with the pretties I already possess.) But somehow the modest budget I set aside for my interest somehow gets spent just the same, and I follow the tracking number of my incoming boxes with the same anticipation.

[Keropi]

I started out in 1997 collecting anime cels from any shows I that liked. Then I started concentrating more on Video Girl Ai and Maison Ikkoku cels. It's better to have a more narrow focus.

After I got my fill from those general cel series, I started collecting mainly only cels that came from romantic game anime adaptions. There were a lot of those on YJ and they went mostly untouched by non-Japanese fans. They were fairly easy to get. After having enough of those, I switched to collecting sketches. I got those for awhile, but after running across so many non-production sketches that were drawn by animators, I started acquiring less expensive sketches.

Those were the phases I went through. I mainly tried to acquire easier stuff. There were series that I stopped trying to get because they were too frustrating to keep losing out on (or because I didn't have the right connections or timing to get them).

[GuyvarIII]

Have my collecting habits changed? I don't know. Most of my collection is a result of what has been available to me throughout my years collecting, in addition to what works and artists I've known about. I've also deliberately wanted my collection to be diverse, and include different styles of animation art.

I started out looking for part of my favorite VHS anime, i.e., Guyver cels, but, before the end of my first year collecting, I had already branched out into purchasing Teknoman and picked up a few Dragonball cels. I was affected by nostalgia, and the shows I saw when I was a small child. I sought cels from Robotech, Voltron, and ThunderCats, along with He-Man, TMNT, and other American shows. When I started collecting in the late 1990s it seemed the popular anime titles to collect cels from were Dragonball, Sailor Moon, Tenchi Muyo, and El Hazard. Though I had seen those shows, I was really struck by one-shot OVAs and movies. I was looking for and buying cels from shows like: Appleseed, Devilman, Laughing Target, Golgo 13, Captain Harlock, MD Geist, Robot Carnival, Wicked City, Akira, and Roujin Z. With access to Mandarake's California stores' bargain cel bins in Torrance, and then later in Santa Monica, at an early point in collecting I was able to have a diverse collection of cels for reasonable prices.

Later on, I began looking for cels from shows done by certain directors, designers, and creators who's work I had seen and knew the look of and enjoyed. I started with Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Osamu Dezaki, Katsuhiro Otomo, Koichi Ohata, Go Nagai, and Leji Matsumoto; then I expanded to Rin Taro, Ryosuke Takahashi, Masami Obari, Mamoru Oshii , Nobuteru Yuki, and Yorihisa Uchida. When looking at the shows of my youth, I realized that they were influenced by earlier shows. I then watched and collected Yoshiyuki Tomino's works Ideon, and Dunbine; along with many of Yoshitaka Amano's older titles, like, Casshan and Tekkaman; and a lot of classic giant robot shows.

At this point, I realized that I was only watching and collecting from shows that no one was looking at, so I started watching, enjoying, and then even collecting sketches from contemporary anime like Bleach and Hellsing.

Even when looking for specific items, I'll try to keep my eyes open for whatever awesome looking cels and sketches are available. However, just looking at what I have currently at Rinkya...



I think the emphasis of my collection has always been and still remains – anime movies and OVAs from the 1980s and 1990s.

1st Edit -- I typed the wrong name.

[Jadeduo]

I think that all of us who have been around 10 years or more have had a tendency to evolve and change with an ever changing market. As inventory had dried up in other series, and exploded in some others, I have always moved back and forth between a few core series and then slowly added more as inventory has come available.

I would say my core when I started was Sailor Moon and DBZ, however when I started DBZ was in one of it's pricier times so very little was added to my gallery at the time, prices are similar now to what they had been then. Sailor Moon was pretty competitive between 2002-2007, I bought a good chunk of my collection then but the inventory even then was drying up slowly and prices were high to middling, nowhere near the rumored heyday of the late 90's.

In 2004, I added GW and CCS to my repertoire, with a brief dip into Tenchi Muyo! which lasted like a year, CCS was UBER cheap back in the day... well except for SCENE cels, although those were slightly cheaper than they are now. In 2006, I sold off most of my GW collection, except for 3 pieces or so.

In 2007-2008 I bought my first Saiyuki Burial Artwork off of Mandarake there were 3 or 4 BG/Layout Lot auctions from the very first episode of Burial I had won 2 of them. I still regret to this day not just plunking down the money and winning those other lots when I could have; as the collector that won them has gone down into the black hole. This was the start of the Burial Obsession...

From 2008-2012 I was generally lurking not really buying things (maybe a few here and there), and then in 2012 I came back...

This brought an explosion of purchases on my part. The market for Sailor Moon and DBZ was in a lull... I was able to add a ton of items to my gallery for prices I did not think possible in years before. I also started stalking Saiyuki in a way that I hadn't before, it was added to my list of series I would regularly check. I also in this time frame started collecting Tennimon, and let me tell you if you start collecting Tennimon plan on donating some of the extras you receive to cons and the like they propagate like rabbits. *prolly has 100 Tennimon cels/sketch sets, and could prolly donate half of them... still.*

After the flurry of Sailor Moon, Saiyuki, DBZ, and Tennimon stopped, Sailor Moon basically started to dry up, most things I have recently purchased from Sailor Moon have come from Private Gallery offers and Mandy, YJ has not had anything recently that has tempted me, except for a few pieces which are few and far between I think I've added 3 or 4 last year. DBZ has shot up so much that it is better I cut my collection back some more and wait for the market to back off from it's current craziness, so I am cutting back there. Tennimon is sporadic as well as what I have is really nice and the cel has to be really special for me to add it to the rest of the bunnies.

In 2014 - Present - I have from the Saiyuki obsession discovered a love for sketch art, so I branched out then into Loveless, Junjo, FMA, Bleach, and Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi. I'm sure there are more lol, but I have been more aggressively looking for newer series, as well as spending more time meeting up with other collectors at cons in the like, also original art is a new obsession... *blames Cutiebunny for this, but also snuggles her for this* This is in part a good spin off of my love of Production Sketch Art, and seems a natural progression from there I think. In the meantime, I mostly still stalk, Sailor Moon, CCS, Tennimon, Saiyuki, and Loveless. Most of the other series that I collect from I am checking more sporadically, and I also check AB and RS regularly to see what offer periods come and go. A lot of my recent purchases have been made this way, and I am close on some payment plans that I started late last year that I will be finishing soon.

Sorry for the rambly dissertation... I get that way when I reminisce... *is old lady*

[cutiebunny]

also original art is a new obsession... *blames Cutiebunny for this, but also snuggles her for this*

The rabbit hole is as wide as it is deep...ohohohohoho.

2003 - My first foray into the rabbit hole. I bought my first two cels at the same time, when I was feeling sorry for myself at a training camp in Georgia. I was a huge Sailor Moon fan and at the time, still collecting the Japanese trading cards. As I neared the end of that, I was disappointed that there were so many wonderful scenes, especially from the final season, that were never made into trading cards. My first few cels all fit this category. There was no highlight on any particular character or season at that time. I simply wanted to own artwork that was not available in any other format.

...And then I bought a Sailor Moon cel that was featured on a trading card....

When I first really began to dedicate myself to Sailor Moon, a lot of collectors were leaving the market at that time, so I had access to their collections. There also was a seller on Yahoo Japan, god_hand777, that, weekly, would post at least two dynamite Sailor Moon cels for sale. There was a lot of pettiness during that time, such as some collectors claiming that everything GH posted was their wishlist and demanded that everyone back off. If you posted your wins too quickly after the auction, there was a risk that the person who you had outbid was still upset, and would thus target the next auction that you might want. Yet, despite being really poor, I was happy. There was so much nice stuff out there that you really didn't mind waking up at 4 am to pray that your competition would suffer some sort of outage so that you could win that cel (sorry). We were constantly at each other's throats. One day you'd win and the next you'd be internally outbid at the last 10 seconds.

2007 - 2010 - God_Hand's SM supply started to die down sometime in 2007. After noticing Sensei's updates, I began to slowly drift off into collecting cels from Cardcaptor Sakura. After perusing his gallery, I really gravitated to artwork from Episode 40 (The Dream card). At first, I kept to solely collecting background artwork from this episode. And then, lured in by the really lovely layouts that often accompanied the backgrounds, I expanded to collect backgrounds from many other episodes. I still primarily focused on Episode 40. I really made CCS a large part of my focus for some time. It also did not help that Madhouse was selling large swaths of their vaulted stuff to keep their studio afloat during this era. I spent stupid money at Anime Expo and, primarily, with one particular Japanese dealer. I remember going to Slugfests of that era, sitting at a table with other collectors as they rambled off how much they spent with the same seller and, wondering if it was time to leave the hobby because I could not afford it.

2009 - present - Anime Expo 2009 was the first convention I'd attended where I'd gotten an autograph from a Japanese artist. There was a Pokémon animator there. I brought a cel for him to sign and received the ugliest Pikachu doodle I'd ever seen. And yet, it was this ugly doodle that got me interested in original artwork and the artists themselves. Through hours of waiting in lines at conventions, I've met a great group of people (and some not so great, but meh). Prior to this, I didn't get along with anyone that I'd met in the hobby. Collecting felt very lonely. So, if anything, what I value most through original art are the friends I've made.

I've sort of narrowed my focus to primarily collecting New Year's Postcards, which has been nice because it keeps me from spending money as they rarely pop up. I've picked up artwork as a reward through Kickstarter, but this has been few and far between because they're either too pricey or so infrequently offered. I don't know. I don't feel the same urgency to buy as I once did. I like what I have, but I don't troll through auctions as much as I did and feel less of a desire to wake up at 4 am to bid.

[ToriPagac]

not really I still collect the same stuff being poor a cel is a rareb treat I do get to a point were my collection feels complete in one area or another sailor moon for life

[ReiTheJelly]

When I first started, I wanted little bits of all my favorite shows. Eventually, I evened out my collecting habits and focused on only a few series. Oddly enough, when I first started, I wanted to collect all of Sakura's battle costumes from CCS. At the time, they were all the collecting rage and insanely expensive/competitive to obtain, so I switched my focus to the much cheaper/neglected card spirit cels. With time, those caught on in popularity, too, and became almost prohibitively expensive to collect. Thankfully, I was able to afford most of what I wanted and only had to really worry about competition beating me to desirable cels.

In recent years, I've almost abandoned this hobby entirely because there is nothing left to buy that interests me. I haven't bought a new CCS cel in 5 years, or a new Miyuki-chan in Wonderland cel in 7 years. Mostly, because I can't find any of the characters/caliber of cel that would entice me to buy them. As such, I've essentially stopped browsing auctions because nothing new was ever there. I'm sure I've missed out on some real gems because of this, but it gets boring browsing auctions on a daily (or even weekly) basis, only to find nothing. And my current hobbies are pretty darn expensive, so I've mostly been ignoring cels...

[BuraddoRun]

Ever since learning about vinegar syndrome, I've started to want to collect more pencil work. And knowing that douga can be traced,I've focused more on wanting genga or commissioned, original artwork from main animators. But I still collect the other stuff.

[cutiebunny]

I've focused more on wanting...original artwork from main animators.

Oh noes, another poor sap has fallen down the rabbit hole.


Yeah, it's really an addictive form of artwork to collect. You know you have it bad when you not only spend money to attend a convention but have spent upwards of 7 hours waiting in line for the hope of getting a sketch. I initially would just buy artwork drawn of characters from properties that I liked from their creator, character designer, etc, but after attending conventions for many years, there are times where I'll simply buy the artwork because I liked the person who drew it. Every so often, you meet a really sweet artist or someone like Kazuchika Kise who had the balls to tell off Anime Expo staff. I'm very guilty of buying artwork from guests like that.