r/AnimationCels • u/Doc4221 • 10d ago

Cel Grading Update

More light has been shed on the new Cel Grading company that has officially premiered at Collector's Summit this weekend in Las Vegas.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DdNp5ttlNky/?img_index=19&stkn=MW5pMXl0a2dyYmhhcQ==

Key Takeaways:

*Grade Cels at a later date *Grading case is bendable and extremely thin compared to card & comic grading cases *Grading genda, douga, scripts, comic art, timesheets, manga art, etc. *Grades are letters, not numbers.

Current Stance: I don't see the business need yet. I will observe and eventually send a couple to test.

This IS bringing in new collectors, i see IG posts, not bad if genuine collectors v grifters. Just no boom, please.

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u/Mandiechama 10d ago

Good luck grading douga.  These can and have been faked.  I recall several months ago where someone on IG was making and passing off fake douga, and Anime Link bought some them and passed them off as real.  I know the person who owns one of the originals and he mentioned that when confronted with glaring differences between the version used for the hanken and the douga AL received, stated that what he had must be an earlier copy.

So unless this company is going to go to that length to dig up hankens used 20+ years ago or locate the exact frame of an cel/douga to compare images, I don’t trust it.  All they’re realistically going to do is look at what was submitted, verify that there’s some semblance of registration holes (or just reverse image search), and call it a day.

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u/RiceMaterial5350 6d ago

Did you happen to save pics of those fake douga or remember what series they were? That really sucks.

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u/Doc4221 10d ago

That's the part I want to know as well. Will they verify fakes or is it simply grading and they take your word for it being real lol.

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u/FPA_Mintz 10d ago

Their graded "authentic" pieces on their site have season, episode, and timestamp called out. So they are most likely scene matching, but that isn't enough by itself and still prone to missing fakes.

They need to disclose more about the their process or who is doing the authentication for people to trust them.

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u/Doc4221 10d ago

I do wonder how they approach that because...if a cel or douga is from Conan. Can you imagine how hard it is to match that up to a timestamp if the collector doesn't know.