"Wedding Announcement"

This piece came from eBay as a Buy-It-Now. Slightly less spectacular than some of my other pieces, but it's still a great shot of the main character without too much distortion from mid-movement and a decent display of emotion. This appears after Ariel hears of the wedding and is about to rush downstairs to find Eric. Before she does, she turns and scoops up Sebastian and kisses him. This cel is when she is in transition from the former to the latter.

 

This was the first cel I bought that did NOT come with a Certificate of Authenticity (COA), but it DOES have a seal (trimmed image doesn't show it, but it's there). The seal is the most important. From what I have gathered, the COA isn't as important because it can be transferred to other pieces; a seal is branded onto the piece.

The real kicker is that this cel only cost me $60; my cheapest acquisition to date! The main problem was that the seller wasn't doing international shipping by default, and I had to POUNCE on this fast! So I had the cel sent to Leslie, who was quite happy to receive it, and rather surprised by the price too. The cel wasn't in an ACME envelope, and although all the pieces being sold by the seller came in the same cling-wrap-like packaging, Leslie couldn't find anything remarkable about the presentation to discern anything about the cel's past.

The seller was also selling two other pieces from this movie: one was a cel of Eric and Max dancing on the ship, and one was of the entire Under The Sea ensemble with the lobstering at the front, facing the fourth wall, claws up.

The first cel I didn't like, even though it was only $50, because Eric was in mid-motion and his hair was swooped over most of his face so that he looked kind of emo. The second cel, which was $60, I missed out on to someone else (don't know why they didn't buy this one too) who re-posted it on eBay two weeks later for $350.

That's still pretty cheap, but I'm not interested in giving someone a $290 payoff because they can hit the Buy-It-Now button faster. Naturally, some schmuck bought it and is probably happy with it. At that price, there's no reason not to, unless you know how the guy got it, how much he paid for it and you don't believe he deserves the money.

The reason these cels were being sold so cheaply was that they were being sold by someone who really didn't know their worth. From what I could gather, he was selling them for a friend who had divorced her husband. The cels were his but they seem to have been given to her in the settlement, and she was trying to get what she could for them. I hate to dance on someones marriage wreck, but it worked out good for me!

This piece cost $60. Photographic background. Unframed in plastic wrapping. The authentication seal is in the corner.