I'd noticed a pair of miscellaneous cels over at Anime Gambit. They were cheap, only $15 a pop, and used a rather dull palette. I was drawn to them, however, since they featured a dark-haired guy embracing a rather upset looking girl. (Okay, so I have a soft spot for dark haired guys. The only thing better then a dark-haired guy glomphing a girl is a dark-haired guy glomphing another guy. *wanders off muttering about yaoi* But I digress...) I really liked the cel where the girl's head-- yes, the girl was Tiara but I didn't know it at the time-- had fallen back against his chest, so it looked like they were snuggling. (She was really visibly upset in the other cel.)

So the cels sat at Gambit and sat and sat and sat. Eventually my favorite of the pair finally sold and eventually I figured out that the cels came from Shamanic Princess. (But I still didn't buy the cel!) So the lone cel sat and sat and sat and eventually Gambit discounted it to $5. And did I leap upon this deal like a starving hyena with a straggling wildebeest in sight? Heck, no, I just let it sit there and sit and sit until finally someone else got the cel! *repeatedly bonks head* So, no, I did not get the above cel from Gambit.

Time passed and I finally saw the Shamanic Princess OAVs. SP cel prices had skyrocketed by this time, so I was really bonking my head over missing that $5 (or even better the $15 one) cel at Gambit. But, lo and behold, one day another cel from the same sequence appeared on eBay! So the bottom of Kagetsu's face isn't visible and Tiara's mouth is gaping wide open-- it was a chance to redeem myself! (Erm, I'm still looking for that $15 cel I missed at Gambit's though ) And then I actually won the auction for a measely $17!

It was the December of 2000 and I'd gone on a bit of an early X-mas shopping spree for myself in the cel department. I decided to get money orders for all my purchases instead of sending checks since it would be safer and quicker blah blah blah. Yeah, right. Time passed and while I got all the other things I had ordered(including cels from Japan!), the Shamanic Princess cel remained missing in action.

And then a month later I received an e-mail from the seller saying that payment had never arrived. I scanned in my receipt for the money order (lucky I'd kept it!) and we waited a few weeks more... but still no sign of my mail. So I trundled off back to the post office to get another money order and where they informed me I had to pay to have the first bloody money order tracked before I could get a refund on it. Grrr! It cost me half the total price of the cel just to get payment sent! Friggen moogling post office with their friggen 'money order is the safest way to send money through the mail' when they friggen lose the mail themselves after their friggen third rate hike in two years... *grumble* And I'd also bought a Silver Storm She-ra horse for a friend that same December and while my money order did arrive that time half of the envelope had been chewed off! Pah! And 'Pah' again, I say! Canceling a check is free!

*cough* Anyway, now that is out of my system... My first money order never did show up. And neither did the tracking number I paid for on my cel. But eventually the cel did arrive safe and sound! Woo hoo! Thanks to the seller for being so patient! And if you'll excuse me, I must go work on my instant transportation machine.

The cel, itself, is rather odd. It's two stuck layers (with quite a bit of dirt spotting between the layers that I haven't gotten around to cleaning yet ) but only the top layer is marked A-14 (and this layer has an odd border of raised dots at the top. Too bad it doesn't show up in the scan) The bottom layer comprising Kagetsu's shadow is completely unmarked. Another cel with shadows that I own, my Mamoru Dream Mirror one, also has weird markings, with both layers to the cel marked A-17. It seems that shadow layers really are shadows and don't count as their own layers!