"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.