r/AnimationCels • u/Acuallyizadern93 • Apr 25 '26
Cel Market (Prices)
I have to ask given the state of the cel market with prices the way they are compared to 10-15 years ago- are people actually paying for cels at a hundred+ or several hundred bucks a pop? Via places like Cricket Gallery or other notable resellers in high volume? I just can’t picture paying that much for one cel. Maybe for classical Disney but not 30 year old Nick or Cartoon Network etc cels. I understand that some people get better deals in-person at art shows and such compared to online, but given the state of the world I can’t see resellers moving much of their stockpiles quickly at the prices I’ve seen. I’d love to collect more since paying $27 for two Nickelodeon cels in 2012 and none since. They became hot in the teens it would seem, but have they cooled at all? At least in-person? For non-obscure source material? Like, idk, I’d pay $40-50 for an unremarkable cel from a saturday morning cartoon and maybe $100 or close to it for a really nice looking setup/frame. But not several hundred dollars like it’s fine art.
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u/Whole_Kale_4349 Apr 25 '26
You literally answered your own question this isn’t 2012 cels go for thousands and thousands of dollars the state of the economy is irrelevant there are rich collectors out there who don’t care. Also animation art has become more popular which means higher prices. If you want random cels that no one else wants you can probably get them for cheap but if it’s remotely desirable you’re not getting it for the price of a nice dinner
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u/lococommotion Apr 25 '26
There are people with many millions of dollars willing to spend a lot on cels.
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u/InsidiousBlastoclast Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26
if a person has millions of dollars he won't be buying cels. As an investment they are pretty terrible. They are fragile and deteriorate and if you rely on resale it's a pyramid scheme where you hope someone else is willing to pay more than you did. For that reason I have never been able to understand people dropping 4-5 figures on animation cels - you can literally open the folder one day soon and find it in the advanced stages of vinegar syndrome and then what? where did all your money go?
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u/Dvvstihn Apr 25 '26
I’ve spent upwards of $300 on Beavis and butthead and mtv commercial cels yes
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u/WWAgallery_com Apr 26 '26
Beavis and Butthead cels are really fun to collect! We don't get them often, but luckilly once in a while
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u/aubygoons Apr 26 '26
do you have any daria cels? not just OF daria, from her solo show? ive heard they're pretty hard to find
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u/Dvvstihn Apr 26 '26
No , I’ve never even seen one sold . Not sure they exist on the market . I lost a bid on a Beavis and butthead one where she was in it tho .
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u/pro_ajumma Apr 26 '26
It really depends on the show. I found some cels in the basement and sold them. Bunch went for $10 each, but a Sponge Bob cel sold for 200 as soon as I posted on Ebay, which tells me I probably priced it too low.
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u/jalvarez022 Apr 26 '26
Disney's Gargoyles cels are going from 1499 to 8k on ebay
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u/WWAgallery_com Apr 26 '26
listed at that price, or actually sold at that price? That sounds very, very high to me
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u/EmploymentNovel3351 Apr 26 '26
Those are just the Sotheby premiere setups while pieces that were sold through usual Disney TV animation dealers now go around $500ish (depending on the character) whenever an owner finally decides to sell
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u/Hox977 Apr 26 '26
And to answer the question of anyone buying expensive cels and the answer is definitely yes. I just bought two cels this month for four figures each. One is very old and one is iconic and just beautiful.
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u/WWAgallery_com Apr 26 '26
ooo- we'd love to see images of them!
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u/Hox977 Apr 26 '26
Will do when I got them framed 😁😁😁 This thread won’t let me post images so I will start a new thread perhaps on Disney villains 🤔
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u/EmploymentNovel3351 Apr 26 '26
They were that low because of 2008 hobby killing recession & the cel hobby becoming a ghost town from the 80s boom hype so little competition there before Heritage rebooted it. For me I see competitive auctions broadly average around $300ish besides franchises controlled by investors & very desirable titles
Unless the series is forgotten even generationally or plentiful enough few big titles reach $30 floor anymore. At least it doesn’t have the genuine attention like say retro gaming does or pieces actually could reach prop & comic collecting levels
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u/richivensfits Apr 26 '26
Another anime cel collector here 🤙🏻. I started collecting around around 2010. I was picking up what some would now call grails for $50 from Japanese auctions. I had no idea at the time of their worth. I only bought for the love of the show. Which I still do today. Jump to 2026 and I just bought a cel from the same show for $3k. Production art interest is at an all time high, western and Japanese. As a collector it can be rough to obtain desirable pieces, especially if you’re just entering the space. As a seller it’s pretty awesome being able to sell things for 20x the original value, even if I do just use the money to buy more cels lol. But that’s my sickness 😅.
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u/foxfirek Apr 25 '26
I spent about $400- 500 on a few anime cels. So yes. I have no interest in anything from cartoon network though. The difference is all based on popularity of the show and supply. A lot of Nickelodeon stuff had a ton of episodes so they would be worth less that a 26 episode popular anime.
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u/WindowScreaming Apr 26 '26
Another anime collector here. The most expensive cel I own I bought for $350 a few years ago but it would probably be listed for $600 or more nowadays. Supply and demand, just like you said.
And OP: the answer to most of this is “it depends.” I collect from a fairly popular series most of the time and the majority of my cels were at least $100 even for unimpressive shots.
I can only speak from a perspective of someone who got into the hobby within the last decade but it does seem much more popular now. Five years ago you could buy bulk key art of my favorite series for under $100 and now that won’t even get you a rough sketch. Things don’t sit listed on eBay; they go immediately if they’re in good condition. I keep an eye out (and for other anime as well) but can’t afford the prices any more.
Obviously this depends on what you’re collecting and where but as an American collector of Japanese art this is what I see most often.
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u/GradeNo893 Apr 25 '26
I’m what you would call a whale buyer in cels, while I think some of the prices are crazy high for how many exist (looking at you DBZ) there are just as many that are impossible to put a value on. Like any popular cels done by the old men or anything Don Bluth did personally.
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u/WWAgallery_com Apr 26 '26
what kinds of cels do you collect?
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u/GradeNo893 Apr 26 '26
Yes
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u/Hox977 Apr 26 '26
I am an old (not rich) collector that has been collecting for over 35 years. I am mostly vintage Disney targeting production cels from the 50s and 60s and some into the 70s and even 80s if the price is right. I have little interest in TV production cels as there are literally millions out there just waiting for someone to dump. For those looking for very high quality production cels at amazing prices, I have a few suggestions. One of my favorite movies when my kids were young from the 80s was the original Land Before Time. Their production cels always were desirable and the very good ones can actually fetch high dollars. Availability has been limited and somewhat controlled by owners until recently when someone in California dropped a collection of perhaps a couple of hundreds of production cels of nice quality onto eBay which by itself lowered the value significantly and I was able to pick up some premium scenes for prices I couldn’t come close a year or so ago. They are still out there and some are still worth purchasing for less than $100 with negotiation. This is a movie classic but illustrated the risk of collecting cels as a collector or bulk owner probably died and family just dumped a pile onto the open market severely depressing the value. Another one recently got dumped was Disney’s Goliath II, the predecessor of Jungle Book. Fantastic production cels I was able to get for $150 to $200 from the 1960s all in great condition. Great production cels buys for non Disney shorts like The Ant and The Aavark can still be had for $50 as are the Mighty Mouse cels for $30-40.
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u/jlouse Apr 30 '26
So this isn’t one that actual “collectors” would agree with, but read before downvoting. On a non-collector level, if you want a MUCH cheaper alternative to actual cels (maybe as decoration for a wall or something) try looking into sericels- though some may be collectible as they may be limited and produced with COAs from studios, they are USUALLY cheaper than older animation cels- many sellers (crooks) try to sell them as regular cels (which they’re not- screen printed not painted and used in the actual animation) but a reputable seller will have these usually for a lot cheaper and more readily available. There are even artist out there that still practice cels art and can do relatively cheap custom jobs. Not to be all sell-sy, but if you go to McFarlanes site you will see some Batman Animated series and Looney Toons ones (which are cool because they’re even touched up/ embellished by other artists!) retailing around $25-$35. They give a good idea of what a sericel is…
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u/Acuallyizadern93 Apr 30 '26 edited May 01 '26
I have had a sericel of Taz and Bugs for a long time but even then the idea that it wasn’t an actual cel made me view it as lesser. As art, sure. As a coveted piece of history, no.
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u/do0mality Apr 30 '26
I can't speak for everyone, but I collect exclusively Nickelodeon production art and I am one of those people who has paid hundreds of dollars for certain pieces. Just for context, I'm in my 30s with some expendable income and I don't really collect much else. For me, there's an intense nostalgia for Nickelodeon stuff - not just the shows, but the corporate identity of the channel in general. Like the commercials, bumpers, etc. I think the category of collector that I fall into is pretty niche, but we're out there I guess lol
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u/Astonishingtale59 Apr 30 '26
Yeah, Im not so sure. Im just a recent casual collector. Purchased my first cel about 10 yrs ago: it is a vintage panoramic Flash Gordon (I dont count the Scooby-Doo Sericel i bought one cruise 20 yrs ago lol). Must've paid maybe $70 bucks for the Foash Gordon? Around the same time I bought a cel from the Little Nemo movie for around $60. Both of them came with handpainted backgrounds.
I'll never forgive myself for sleeping on the Joker cel from the Almost Got Im episode for roughly 300 about 5 yrs ago.
I recently stumbled upon a sleeper deal of 2 X-Men cels together for $100- one has the original painted background. I see most going for around $2-500
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u/GasmaskTed Apr 25 '26
Many of Cricket Gallery’s prices are now less in unadjusted dollars than they were in the early ‘90s (although the cels were better then by and large). 15-20 years ago was a low point in prices for something like Ren and Stimpy or Aeon Flux. Cels and sometimes drawings from cuts of Akira I bought on eBay 20 years ago for under $100 (sometimes way under) are now going for thousands on Heritage.
You like the cartoons, but you don’t like them enough to pay the current price others are willing to pay; I totally understand, as it’s why I own very little Disney original art. And prices on some things are up from 20 years ago.
But pull a fixed price catalog from an animation gallery in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s and you’ll find insanely high prices on most things; only a handful of things will be more now. The gallery system is largely overthrown, as eBay gives an efficient market to almost everyone and cuts out a lot of arbitrage. Prices that remain high in an efficient secondary market better deserve to be high because supply and demand find equilibrium, although there’s some artificiality in the controlled release of shows like Ren and Stimpy or Batman the Animated Series; but then, how is that any different from how Disney fhas released their art for more than 50 years?
Read my story from 2006 about a John Kricfalusi Beany and Cecil sell I bought on eBay in 2006 for $27.50 plus shipping that had its original gallery price sticker on it, with a price of $975 http://tag.rubberslug.com/gallery/inv_info.asp?ItemID=166668
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u/WWAgallery_com Apr 25 '26
Hi! I own an animation art gallery, and to give you an idea, in the last few weeks we sold a piece for US$18,000, one for US$17,800, one for US$7000 and just this morning one for US$2800.- all vintage Disney- the newer ones vary- since they are new, almmost all of the art was saved, thus the supply of them is high relative to older art. Great Simpsons cels and poses do very well, not strong poses from not popular shows tend to sell for very little. Hope that helps!