"Determination"

This cel first appeared on eBay a few months back for $1695 and I didn't have the money to buy it.

Then about two months ago Leslie Combemale from ArtInsights contacted me and showed me this cel, which I still wanted. I had a bit more money, but not quite enough, so Leslie made a deal with me and I paid $1000 up front and the rest ($695) within a month.

Anyway, the cel:

A beautiful, emotional expression on her face and a full body! Also, the lighting of the scene gives her a greeny-blue tail instead of an outright green tail, which I like!

The quirky thing about this cel setup is that the cels do not actually go together (i.e. Not a key setup). If you break down the cels into their original frames you get three separate images:

1. Flotsam and Jetsam

2. Ariel

3. Bubbles

 

As you can see, Ariel and the eels aren't supposed to have quite as much crossover. Of course, in such a mismatched setup, Ariel gets full priority and is placed on top of Flotsam and Jetsam, despite them actually being on top of her during the film. As for the bubbles, they were made by her tail. I'm thinking I may shift the bubble layer back behind Ariel so that they don't occupy her face.

Being mismatched, I'm not sure how this affects the value. $1695 is far better than $2300, which is how much this cel was offered by Animation Sensations (a.k.a Georgetown Frame Shoppe). Incidentally, they still have it on their site marked as "SOLD", as if they were the ones who sold it. Don't believe it!

This piece cost $US1695. Photographic background. Unframed. The authentication seal is in the bottom-right corner.

Brief Update

I haven't updated this blog for a little while.

That would be because I haven't had the finances to acquire any pieces of artwork (at least any decent pieces) and I don't want to make this blog about pieces that I have nothing to do with, though the occasional post won't hurt. During this time of personal economic struggle I've watched cels go at very reasonable prices:

A fully framed cel of Sebastian, with excellent expression, framed by none other that Leslie Combemale herself (you can tell by the distinct gold seashell framing, which Leslie confirmed was her own work) sold for less than $500 on eBay.

A cel of Ariel in her wedding gown sold for $1200. If only they had posted it up two weeks later, I could have afforded it. The problem with eBay is that you need to have the finances wrapped up virtually immediately, whereas a private sale allows for a bit more flexibility and negotiation.

But my woes are set to temporarily abate as I acquire a new piece from ArtInsights . Thanks to a little negotiation and very kind saleswoman (thank you Leslie!) I am on my way to acquiring my fifteenth piece! I will create a separate post for it once I have finished paying it off, which should be within the next month.

And of course I continue to scour eBay, which always has the greatest influx of Little Mermaid cels. There are a couple on there (with seals, of course) right now that are reasonably priced:

- Ariel and Flounder
- Ariel, Flounder and Shark

There was a third of Sebastian, but he sold just yesterday. None are bargains, but this seller seems to know the market price of these cels and isn't asking too much for them, unlike some other cels which are priced well outside their value. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the more expensive ones have been up there for a while.

There are also some without seals. They seem to think that the cel's authenticity and legality are assured by either supplying a generic COA with the piece (COAs from Disney without individual details written on them can be moved between pieces), saying that the COA has been "lost" (i.e. never existed because the piece was stolen) and never mentioning a seal, or having the cel autographed by Jodi Benson (the voice of Ariel).

In all three cases the approach doesn't make up for a lack of seal of authenticity, which is stamped directly onto the artwork and not transferable to another piece. This is unless the seal is on the uppermost cel of a multi-cel setup, which may be a cel of bubbles that can sneakily be transferred to a similar setup; you're going to want to make sure that the cel of bubbles at least fits in with the scene. There are plenty of legitimate non-key cel setups like this, but if the cel of bubbles doesn't at least match the sequence, there are a few questions you need to be asking...

Then there is this cel setup:
- Ursula and Polyps

This cel setup has no visible seal but it's legitimacy is assured due to its provenance: it was catalogued and sold at Sotheby's The Little Mermaid auction in 1990. I have a copy of the catalogue and it's in there! It comes with it's matching, one-of-a-kind, watercolour,  horizontal-pan background, making this a master key setup, which is pretty awesome (and, of course, drastically increases the value of the piece)! It comes with the Sotheby COA, making this a genuinely rare collectible. The seller has reduced the price recently from the original $8500 asking price to $6400, so I can't imagine this cel will remain available for much longer.

"Watch For Sharks"

At around the same time that a very popular Kiss The Girl cel appeared on eBay, Leslie Combermale from ArtInsights offered me a selection of cels from a private collector. I liked almost all of them, but some stood out from others.

In the end it came down to two: one of a large Ariel with an almost full tail, looking uncomfortable as she explain her collection to Sebastian (not in the shot). The fact that she gets into a better position later in the sequence, plus the fact that Flounder, who comes in about three quarters through the sequence, is absent, led me to pass it up for this one:

The smiles on both characters are fantastic. The dialogue I imagine between them is:
Ariel: "We totally going to get grounded for this. Are you okay with that?"
Flounder: "Hell yeah!"

Even though I know that's not actually the case, the though makes me smile :D

Really, the scene is where Ariel is telling Flounder he can sit out the adventure and "watch for sharks". Flounder smiles for a few seconds before realising what Ariel has just said.

I was momentarily concerned about the shape of Flounder's face, as he is in transition to smiling a bit wider, but I find that it's not really a problem after all. Not a full body shot of Ariel, but the tail is highly visible and the full set of Ariel's colours, plus the coupling of the two contrasting characters, makes this a terrific piece! This being from the shipwreck scene at the beginning, it is currently the earliest appearing cel in my collection.

The collection that I bought this from was apparently not made available exclusively to ArtInsights. Animation Sensations (a.k.a Georgetown Frame Shoppe) has listed many of the pieces shown to me by Leslie on their gallery's site. Considering they still list this piece on their site as available when it is safely in Leslie's physical possession on my behalf, I'm wondering just how many cels on their site are actually still available.

They have it listed at Animation Sensations for $200 more than what I paid for it. Looks like ArtInsights gives a better deal this time!

This piece cost $US2200. Photographic background. Unframed. The authentication seal is in the bottom-right corner.

Update:
As requested by one reader, and since I have the image anyway, here is the cel with the numbers at the bottom. I'll save you the trouble: they match!

I also discovered that this cel was sold a few months before I bought it on an auction site for $881.00. The price inflation would be due primarily to the additional costs of buying through a gallery, since they do need to make some money through the transaction. Even taking that into account, however, I'd guess the buyer/seller made several hundred dollars profit in the three months he had it for. Good for him.

Cels On eBay

It started with one listing by hkleiman (presumably Harry Kleiman, a dealer with a reputation) of a cel of Ariel and Eric about to kiss at the end of Kiss the Girl. It sold for US$5,448.89!

The auction gained a lot of attention and every week, hkleiman lists another cel (all with seals, by the way). Some of them are good, some of them are kind of ordinary. Some of them are selling between $1000-$1500, but a lot of them are selling for $800-$1000, which are pretty good prices!

Suddenly there was a flood of cels from other sellers onto the eBay marketplace, including from Leslie Combermale, who isn't fond of eBay for several reasons.  There were a couple of really nice ones from a seller who went as low as $1500 for each cel. Unfortunately the one I was most interested in didn't have a seal, even though it came with the COA and the Disney Archives envelope; those things can be changed between pieces which is why the seal is so important. Still, it made me wonder whether that piece could have simply missed the seal by accident, and is otherwise legitimately released from the studio.


Last week he put one up from a sequence which is on my Have-To-Have list. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, since I don't have a lot of money at the moment) Ariel's face was not quite how I wanted it to be. So I willingly let it pass, hoping to find a better shot. Here is the one that was offered:

One funny thing is that three cels very close to each other suddenly became available to buy: two from hkleima and one through ArtInsights (through a collector selling through the gallery). The best way to tell the difference between them is the curling of the end of Ariel's hair as she moves forward. They are as follows:

This cel was offered through ArtInsights:

This cel was sold on eBay by hkleiman for $889.55

This cel was sold on eBay by hkleiman for $1,470.00. Amazing the difference a few weeks can make in an auction result!

So, really close together and all available to buy within a month of each other. At first I thought they were all one and the same, but after looking at them closely, it was just a coincidence! They are all nice, but not on my have-to-have list.


The low prices of the cels going on eBay over the last two month makes me wish I had more money. I did buy one cel, which I will feature in my next post.