Hi!
I agree with you absolutely. In the past, you 
could get an "A grade" (if you want to put it that
way^^) cel for around 2000 yen if you're lucky(
and sharp enough to notice it!). There was a 
good selection and prices were *very* reasonable.
If I were to give a comparism, a Touga cel 
went on Yahoo Japan for 3500 yen and a cel from 
the same sequence -but with the eyes closed- went 
on eBay for more than US$175. The difference is-I
 correct myself- WAS simply amazing. This is how 
it used to to be.

In my opinion, Yahoo Japan provided an alternative
to collectors. For the less wealthy ones, they 
could get cels that they normally wouldn't even
have a chance of getting, at an extremely good
price. The only price being that if you 
*bothered* enough to find the site yourself and
 find a way of getting those cels(and other 
goods, etc). 

But with the free publicity that YJ 
has been getting, prices are rising. And they are
rising fast. What irks me partly are the people 
who are banking on the demand for YJ cels(Aico 
Deputy "Service" comes to mind), just imagine a 
20% commission charge--that is ludicrous! People 
are just putting money into his pocket at no cost
 to him! I mean, if you *seriously* want a cel 
from YJ, do try to find some other altenative of 
getting it. If you really can't, at least *don't*
support a money-making "service" like this. C'mon,
we all know that it doesn't cost a single cent to
bid on YJ... ^^;; "Services" like this give rich 
people easy access to these cels. (And yes, I'm
 talking abt the wealthy @ssholes who *are* in 
fact the ones who are raising the prices on YJ) 

About the part of people reselling cels...from a 
mature point of view, there is nothing wrong at 
all with this. But look at the hyprocrisy in this
forum! ^^:: People are saying they don't mind, it
is right, they don't care, etc. But we all know 
it *ISN"T*. Who likes it when someone buys a few 
hundred of some cels from a series they collect
 and sell them at a higher price? Who likes it 
when you know the cel you just bought actually 
went for less than 5 times the price to another
person? The truth is, no one feels good about 
this!! 

Well, with the rapidly-rising prices on YJ, now I
don't even look at the cels for auction there. 
There used to be a certain novelty in buying from
there, probably because very few souls actually
knew about the place. Then, people bidded 
reasonably. True, there were some high-bidders
who won quite a number of auctions but everyone 
knew when to stop bidding to get them a good 
price. Call me naive, idealistic, whatever, but 
that's the way I think YJ was. Now, most of the 
people bidding there are foreigners(as in non-
Japanese)and the whole situation has changed. 
Well, think about it. 

-Masq