Uhm. . . . Especially if the studio sold the cels 
in the first place, then you are the owner of the 
piece of acetate with the paint on it. True, you 
have no claims of rights to the characters or 
scenes depicted in the paint, but you DO own the 
paint and plastic. If someone were to take it 
from you and that person were caught, they could 
be charged with theft - BECAUSE YOU OWN THE CEL 
and they don't.  And as far as being illegal, why 
are cels illegal? They're not illegal to own. If 
they were, why aren't dealers being arrested?

Also, there is no way to catalogue every cel of 
any type. Disney cels are not "all" catalogued by 
any stretch of the imagination. You would need a 
set of books probably a hundred times the size of 
the completely unabridged Oxford English 
Dictionary. *IF* you could fit it in even given 
that amount of space.

It's more a case that most of us do not have 
individual cels that are valued high enough to 
make it worth anyone's time to insure them. Yes, 
you might have two hundred cels valued at  /- $40 
each, but that's a pittance from the point of 
view of an insurance agency. It would be much 
different if you had a book full of high quality 
Mononoke cels, for example. A collection where 
even on an individual basis, the cels are worth 
near $1000 or more.

Many Sharp Smiles,
--Drac