A production cel is one of the thousands of pictures that make up a cartoon animation. Each one is unique, hand drawn by an artist and then photographed as a single frame of an animated movie. They are a physical piece of artwork from the creation of the cartoon. Cels range in value, from a few dollars and up, depending on the popularity of the program and the scene the cel comes from. A cel of Daffy Duck from the Warner Bros. classic "Duck Amuck" could probably be auctioned on ebay.com for thousands of dollars, and I expect that a production cel from Disney's "Snow White" would go for far more than that....

I started collecting animation cels a few years ago... I'd often wanted one, but it wasn't until I visited Harmony Gold in 1995 that I ended up with my own cel, from the cartoon series "Robotech." I was there to talk with them about a video game I was working on based on the series, and the generous man showing us around saw me drooling over a stack of cels from "Robotech: The Sentinels." He impulsively handed me the one on top (as well as few other toys from their "basement of Robotech goodies").

Most of the cels I own currently are from Japanese cartoons (known in America as "anime")... even the two "Robotech: Sentinels" cels were drawn in Japan, even though the series was funded by an American company. Japan has always had a different attitude about animation than America. In Japan, every genre under the sun is covered by cartoons, from children's shows such as "Pókemon" to pornography involving naughty alien tentacles. They are watched as prime-time programming and the Japanese equivalent of Hollywood (Hayao Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" is the highest grossing movie of all time in Japan, beating out even "Titanic").

After that first cel, I ended up with another Sentinels cel that was the only one left of fifteen or so that Harmony Gold gave Gametek for promotions. I've picked a number since, some from on-line websites or auctions on ebay.com, others from anime convensions, and even one bought off the wall of a sushi restaurant in San Francisco. I also have one non-anime cel from the cartoon series "Dexter's Laboratory."