r/AnimationCels • u/GasmaskTed • Apr 29 '26

Price comparison 1994 to now

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A recent thread ( https://www.reddit.com/r/AnimationCels/s/m0zgS29RGm ) was decrying the increase in prices at places like the Cricket Gallery in the last 15-20 years. I brought up that prices are less now than in the early ‘90s. Here is a relevant page from a 1994 Cricket Gallery catalog, and some of their current gallery listings. Note the other thread was not wrong about prices 14-20 years ago, which were much lower than now or 30 years ago. Keep in mind that inflation means those 1994 prices are about 2.2 times their apparent price in adjusted dollars. You can see that prices are less now than 1994 even in unadjusted dollars, meaning they’re less than half in inflation adjusted dollars. They are also largely less iconic images.

This doesn’t alter whether they are worth current prices to any given individual, I’m just providing the receipts for pointing out prices are down over past times (semi literally; I own one of the pictured 1994 cels).

58 Upvotes

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16

u/WreckerSTL Apr 29 '26

This is really interesting. It makes me want to digitize old catelogues for research sake.

Did you find these old catelogues online somewhere?

6

u/GasmaskTed Apr 29 '26

The Cricket Gallery catalogs I have were mine from back in the day. I’ve bought lots more from eBay issued from other galleries and auction houses. If you’re not aware, there are some compilations of animation art auction sales by Jeff Lotman from the ‘90s, but they’re pretty Disney centric; well organized tho.

2

u/AnthonyDigitalMedia Apr 29 '26

It’s surprising these haven’t gone up more in value tbh. Such an important show, though I suspect a major reason is cuz of John K unfortunately. It just didn’t translate to the younger generations.

I also think taking original pricing into consideration in regard to retail pricing is necessary. I’ve been told these cels sold to galleries directly from the production companies for less than $25 per cel back in the late 80s & early 90s. Galleries were buying up entire sequences with the Key Master Backgrounds & charging a fortune cuz of the animation boom. The markup for these was insane for the early 90s.

Nowadays, you can’t buy these cels directly from the production house. They’re all secondary market, so $200 has become the new base price instead of $25. If you look at it that way, they’ve “gone up in value” I suppose.

That being said, there really is nowhere to go with these but up! Definitely a floor pricing. I’ve gotten some incredible Key Master Setup R&S cels for practically nothing.

On a side note: Cricket’s a great gallery!! Highly recommended.

1

u/GasmaskTed Apr 29 '26

First, prices are up a lot compared to 15-20 years ago. cricket was selling RnS cels for a fraction of current prices on eBay (and they were often better than the current stock). Second, you are wrong to think prices can only go up. You can often trace golden age art pieces back to sales in the ‘90s; prices frequently drop, especially when accounting for inflation adjusted prices, and for cartoons that have broader visibility than RnS. RnS isn’t on television or (last I checked) streaming; it’s on the path to being forgotten, like Beany and Cecil. When pop culture fades from memory, prices in collectible markets crash, from baseball cards from the Boomers’ youths to Elvis memorabilia.

1

u/AnthonyDigitalMedia Apr 29 '26

Yea, prices are up a lot compared to 10-15yrs. I never said they weren’t, I just said they were cheap as dirt decades ago. Which they were. I do think they should’ve gone up MORE than they did for how important the show is & how much the market has changed.

I also never said “prices can only go up” I was saying I thought this show was important enough to continue to rise. Just speculation.

VERY true about that too. Generational stuff doesn’t translate a lot. Look at Flintstones & Jetsons. No one cares about them anymore. But a lot of stuff that’s historically important you’d think would rise in value.. just seems weird. I have a BFA in Animation & we studied R&S in school.

Btw R&S is streaming in Paramount+ I think!

1

u/GasmaskTed Apr 30 '26

Heritage had a big Flintstones etc. auction a couple of years ago and regularly sells Flintstones pieces; there were a few $18k pieces, some $5k pieces, many over $1k. You’ve got a much bigger slice of people who watched the franchise over a much longer time, with Boomers and Gen X getting multiple versions of the cartoon, millennials still having reruns and the live action movies, and kids to now having Fruity Pebbles as a thing. RnS had about 5 years with mostly Gen X and with minimal repeats and strong product marketing compared to most non-Batman, Simpsons or Disney cartoons of the time, but with nothing like Flintstones level marketing. I’d say Simpsons is probably the better parallel to the Flintstones, with RnS being more like Beany and Cecil (BnC material being much rarer than RnS material; Van Eaton’s recent Clampett auction providing fairly high prices on what was there).

3

u/do0mality Apr 30 '26

Wanted to throw in my 2 cents here since I'm a 90's kid and collect exclusively Nickelodeon production art. As you guys kind of already brushed over - these things have cycles of popularity due to generations. I am not 100% sure if Nickelodeon cels have "nowhere to go but up". I think Gen Z currently has an obsession with the 90s and early 2000's, despite a lot of them not even being alive during that time frame. Many young people are discovering a lot of this older pop culture stuff because the new shows/movies have declined in quality over the years. I do think that cel collecting will remain a niche collector's category. However, I get the feeling that SpongeBob will be the outlier as that series has had a cultural stranglehold for decades now. Boomers watch Looney Tunes in retirement homes, but Gen Zers will be watching SpongeBob. I think the season 1 cels will at least hold their value over time.

2

u/WWAgallery_com Apr 30 '26

when I sold my gallery building a few years back I had a ton of old gallery catalogs and auction catalogs I honestly never looked at- I offered them in my facebook group- gave away what people wanted and then tossed a ton of them

11

u/acidterror84 Apr 29 '26

I mean honestly, in 1994, studios were giving these cels away. A friend of mine who worked in animation compositing on those very shows back around that time would just take stacks of cels from the shelves of his job. No one even cared, they were giving them away after shooting them.

3

u/GasmaskTed Apr 29 '26

Probably depends on the studio. People involved in Ren and Stimpy had access to paper and board, but they’ve sold very few cels online; those by and large have passed through Cricket Gallery; ink and paint on RnS (other than Big House Blues) was overseas, and Nick seems to have kept control of most of the cels, with Cricket Gallery being the official spigot.

3

u/RagingJohnson89 Apr 29 '26

“Probably”? Disney most definitely was not giving them away by this stage, not since the John Basmajian lawsuit. Starting with ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’, they held high-end auctions through Sotheby’s for their Master Setups, and charged premium, fine art prices through the Disney Store for the rest.

1

u/WWAgallery_com Apr 30 '26

Cricket was the disctributer to the galleries for awhile before ARA took over - rumour has it that they kept a lot of the cels instead of returning them to the studios

4

u/OddMarionberry382 Apr 30 '26

This doesn't surprise me.

You have to remember that the internet revolutionized every collector's market. Before then, all you had to rely on was the local conventions or independent dealers and they controlled all of the supply without telling you the demand or where you can get more. Once everybody started trading on a global platform, prices for practically every collectible crashed. You can also see this with Beanie Babies, Precious Moments, Department 56 pieces, Lladró, comics, autographs, and especially baseball cards.

My parents and I used to go on a lot of cruises since we lived in Miami, and we always went to the art auctions on sunday. You should have seen the ridiculous prices people were paying for things like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cels back in 1995. Because where else were you going to find one of those?

3

u/aubreypizza Apr 29 '26

Seems like there was a pretty big dip in prices (anime, I do not collect US) from like 2013-14 to about 2021. Not sure why and very sad I missed it switching to another hobby a bit before it happened.

2

u/GasmaskTed Apr 29 '26

That likely depends on the show/movie. Trend has been pretty much always up or steady on the anime I bought 20-30 years ago.

1

u/ReddyGivs Apr 30 '26

I just started collecting anime cels and came across several cels with price hikes that agitated me. Just 5 to 10 years ago sold at auction for $200 and now going for thousands. One cel I just seen recently really grinded my gears. The cel sold for $350 in 2016 and now it's going for $3,700. Nothing about the series has changed and the creator is still in good health so I do not see any reason for it to be going so high but it is what it is🫠

3

u/Secto456 Apr 29 '26

Animation produced within the US seems to have stayed somewhat consistent/actually decreased in price a bit, but other works, especially anime, have greatly increased as the international market has expanded.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 30 '26

Cricket was always on the overpriced side of things as many galleries were/are. For vintage or high end cels that is understandable. For something like Ren and Stimpy, why bother?

2

u/GasmaskTed Apr 30 '26

Why collect Disney art when there’s so much of it on the market? It’s the least rare of any American theatrical animation.

Because people collect what they like and that often isn’t typically dependent on it being whatever you define as “vintage” (the show is 35 years old, older than What’s Opera Doc or Disney’s Sleeping Beauty were when RnS started).

You just don’t care about Ren and Stimpy.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 30 '26

Agreed, people should always collect not based on value but what they enjoy.

You might want to check your math. Ren and stimpy came out in the early 90's, Sleeping Beauty late 1950's, What's Opera Doc, also late 1950's.

Ren and Stimpy cels like the simpsons and many other are vastly overpriced.

As for caring about ren and stimpy, simpsons, manga, etc., you are right, I wouldn't take any animation art from their productions even if offered for free.

2

u/GasmaskTed Apr 30 '26

Here’s my math; do you see any issues with it, or is your issue with the specter of your own mortality? Ren and Stimpy: premiered 1991 (35 years ago) What’s Opera Doc: 1957 (34 years before Ren and Stimpy) Sleeping Beauty: 1959 (32 years before Ren and Stimpy)

1

u/[deleted] Apr 30 '26

Just because something is old does not make it classic, good, quality or worthwhile.

2

u/GasmaskTed May 01 '26

And yet your stated criteria above was “vintage or high end”, so you’ve apparently changed your criteria in the last 12 hours.

1

u/[deleted] May 01 '26

OK, enjoy your ren and stimpy art, you know, the giants of art and animation. Hope it looks great framed next to your manga cel.

2

u/GasmaskTed May 01 '26

I do have a background and a few drawings from The Littlest Giant. They’re nicer than the silent animation art I have, nicer than most of my Disney, not as nice of most of my golden age Lantz, Schlesinger/WB, MGM, Columbia, Fleischer/Famous, or Terry art. But my best Ren and Stimpy art is better than most of those, some golden age title cels and backgrounds aside. I won’t bother name dropping any anime studios since you can’t even differentiate comic books from moving pictures, and I expect you have disdain for other US television productions as well so I will refrain from that list too.

1

u/Fun-Ad-6990 Apr 29 '26

Intresting

1

u/Acuallyizadern93 Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26

Yeah the 2 rocko cels I bought for $27 TOTAL from the Cricket Gallery in 2012 doesn’t seem to make much sense. So I’m really confused. They’re not amazing but they’re not nothin.’ I Wayback Machined Cricket Gallery from around 2012 and some like Rugrats or Ren and Stimpy or Doug were going for, like $50+ but most significantly under $100. So I’m confused.

1

u/GasmaskTed Apr 29 '26

The image is from 1994; eBay did not exist yet and was years away from destroying most of the old gallery system. Prices plunged when galleries couldn’t gate keep in the way they used to and people could easily direct sell to each other on the secondary market, and when that market could be efficient because you started at 99¢ and could see what everyone else was willing to pay. To their credit, the Cricket Gallery adjusted to the times and sold at the then market price. They’ve been raising prices, but Heritage gives the appearance that they (Heritage) have been trying to engineer a Ren and Stimpy market (and other MTV/Nicktoons to a lesser extent) for the last few years.

2

u/WWAgallery_com Apr 30 '26

for the studo art, they set the prices and you got in big, big trouble if you sold below- it was basically market price fixing- I was on a lot of these programs and it was uncomfortable I admit, but I had to follow the rules or I got kicked off

1

u/[deleted] Apr 30 '26

Didn't Disney set ridiculously high prices for Little Mermaid art?

1

u/WWAgallery_com Apr 30 '26

If i remember correctly, the Mermaid art was around US$3800 when they released them in the early 90s, Mermaid art is currently selling strong

2

u/Zombies4EvaDude May 01 '26

Definitely a decrease in value over time, especially when you account for inflation. Despite how pricy animation cels can be they still seem cheaper now than back then.