06 October, 2013

Fake Production Artwork?

I'm not exactly an expert on these things, but I don't think this is a piece of original artwork:



It appeared on eBay a few weeks ago and sold for $91.99. It was tagged as being a "Production Cel" despite not even properly matching the art style of the film. No seal, but no surprise. It's not even a LE cel, which themselves are also made by the studio. I've seen many fakes before, but they don't usually come with a CoE, like this one does:

The trick with most fake cels is that they don't actually claim to be Production Cels, just cels with The Little Mermaid on them, which are hand painted. They're technically not lying. I'm not sure if the certificate above is real either. Usually a CoE in this format has the title in gold or silver embossing. That's not to say that the certificate pictured isn't actually real, but I don't think the artwork it's coming with is. I'm not actually qualified to legitimately call BS on this, but I sure wouldn't buy it!