Cel of the Robber Kitten's Mother Knitting, 1935

Collecting Disney Animation Cels, cont.

There was a period of several months between the time when I took the bar examination and when the results came out. I didn't work during that period, and my animation art dealer and I were both night people. We would talk for hours most nights, discussing animation art he had had or seen in the past, speculating how high prices for animation art would eventually go, and other art-related topics. He would say that he got his inventory from various unnamed sources, describing the circumstances with great particularity. I suspected that most of what he sold came from one or a few different people, but I never expressed any skepticism about what he said...I just listened and remembered. I soon knew that the cels came from a single person who was also selling art to the other seller I dealt with, since very similar cels would be obtained by both at about the same times. My other friend made it clear that he only bought from one person. Both were very reasonable with the prices they charged - well below what I had been paying from animation dealers with stores, but both would keep some of the best cels and drawings that they would get, since both collected for themselves as well as selling to others/me. I finally made contact with the ultimate source by doing something that I really wasn't interested in doing ...don't let your imaginations get carried away, it wasn't anything in any way illegal or improper.

I have had problems in my collecting life with friends who would see things that I collected and wanted to get similar items for themselves -- I really didn't need more competition being generated from my own interests, but, whatever. So, one friday night I was over at my dealer friend's home and he told me that he wanted to go to Newport Beach (about 60 mils away) the following day to buy Mile High comics such as the ones that I had once shown him. After having worked all week and since I was no longer collecting comic books, I told him that I wasn't interested in going along with him, taking the better part of a day off just to keep him company. But he kept nagging me, so I finally relented. He picked me up the next morning and off to Orange County we went. I didn't even go into the place where he bought a few expensive comic books. When we got back to my place, he said he needed to make a telephone call (before the days of cell phones). Not only did he come into my place to make his call, he told me I had to go into my bathroom and turn on the fan so that I couldn't hear what he said on my phone. I really wasn't in the mood for such an indignity, but I knew it wouldn't take up much more of my weekend, so into the bathroom I went. BUT, as I sat in there, I pretty much figured out that he was calling the source for his cels and drawings. When he retrieved me from my temporary exile, I noted the time, saw him on his way, and waited the seemingly endless days until my phone bill arrived. And, although it was a bit of a long shot, at the bill showed a message unit call at exactly the time I had been instructed to wait in my bathroom! Then the hard part began.

I wasn't sure how I would explain who I was a why I, a perfect stranger, was calling, but I didn't have to make any such decisions when I worked up the nerve to call the number, since I reached an answering machine. I didn't think it wise to approach a stranger through some awkward message, so I didn't leave one. The same situation occurred with every call I made, day after day, for at least a month. But then, one day, someone answered! I told him who I was, that I had been buying cels from my dealer friend and the other person who bought from him, that I was a lawyer [what possessed me to share that fact is beyond me today, although he later told me that this info made him think I might be a serious, reliable, honet !!! person. I tried to get him to commit to a meeting, but he kept putting me off...for at least another month...Continued