This whole thing is pretty much an "I agree", but 
at least it solidifies the case for no 
quantitative data. (see other post below this)

>- Prices are changing too quickly. Some serie
>  may be worth far less (or far more) in just
>  a few weeks.

You win, there's no way a price guide could be 
useful unless prices settle down first. A good 
point is animaxis (which I'm sure everyone knows 
about by now since I've seen posts about it). 
Overnight, the prices just shifted for a lot of 
AIC series.

>  buying. (So the price doesn't reflect the
>  market value)

Stalemate. I had hoped to help this problem by 
giving huge margins of error. For instance, from 
the db you could ascertain that $200 was above 
average price for a bgc2040 cel, which would 
probably end up listing for a vague "under $100". 
But you make a point below which makes this a 
moot point anyway.

>- Many collectors think that cels from some anime
>  are rare and so expensive when in reality it's
>  because nearly no dealer bother to put on the
>  market cels from those anime.

I was trying to play averages here and guess that 
the number of uninformed opinions would balance 
out with the number of experienced folk. However, 
how does one tell who knows what they're talking 
about? We'd have to rely on the "experienced", 
which would probably come down to anecdotal 
evidence without a peer-review system or, heaven 
forbid, "the Book of Jason", which will certainly 
be utter crap.

>- Prices from one cel to another can be totaly
>  differant. Setting price per character (and
>  not per anime) is really the minimum. But

This was in the plan, complete with the 
specification that the character be in 
some "typical" format. I mean, Esca collectors 
know what the "typical" Millerna cel looks like 
and they know what the beautiful sunset colored 
Millernas look like. However, I can't think of 
any good way to express that as a number or a 
range.

> When I go to Japan to buy cels, often I buy
> two cels nearly exactly the same but one can
> be two time the price of the other. 

This is the nail in the coffin, since the root of 
the problem is that the way they price things 
seems to be "how much did I sell something 
similar for?" in this case. Did the 2x cel guy 
sell too high? Did the 1x guy sell too low? 
There's no right answer unless that same cel or 
something a couple frames off is resold again. 
Even then, there's a Yurika cel I have in my 
gallery which isn't as good as others in the 
sequence I've seen, only because her mouth is at 
a funny angle.

So, as per the below post, I'll try hacking out 
something that's a big reference on collectors' 
experiences with collecting their favorite shows.
The love for the show gets across, along with any 
other notable facts like general art quality, and 
what to expect when hunting for the show.

Is there any apparent problems with this scheme 
or am I shooting myself in the foot again. You've 
been doing this longer than 98% of us Yann, so 
your opinion is always welcome. 

Thanks!
jn