Cels: Drugs would be cheaper

I am a collector of these beautiful pieces of animation art called "cels" which is short for celluloid. These are small (well not all the time, I have one measuring in at 21inches long!) pieces of acetate (think of it as a transparency like they used in the older days of schools). that have painted images on them. Each one of these images is a frame of animation, it takes an average of 18-24 frames (fps or frames per second) to create a second of animation! Some cels are more coveted then others, such as the start of a sequence, the end of a sequence, and cels called A1End which means it is the only one in the sequence. I own an assortment of all of these that I've been fortunate enough to amass in about 2 years time. I remember I started collecting back in High School, when my job was just a waitress at Pizza Hut and spending 50$ was expensive. Oh how I'd love to go back to those days! Now I easily top 275$ average per piece! With my most expensive piece being 1k! I can't even fathom how it got to be this crazy! To spend 1,000$ on a sheet of plastic, a moment of animation. It's just surreal sometimes. I thank alot of my acquisitions to payment plans, though back when I started these payment arrangements I was well off. Now I'm struggling every month to pay off what is not a necessity (but do I really want to lose and not be refunded the 600$ I've funneled into it so that another person can come and take my holy grail? I think not!). Though I know in the end when that beautiful piece of art comes in it will awe me and be worth every penny I spent, and all the hardship. For now though, I'm laying off (or trying) until I can pay off this biggie and stabilize back to the 200$ range.

Ah. For those of you who want to know just what I'm blowing my money on you can view my gallery here:
midnitekitten.rubberslug.com (no www...otherwise it messes up, and no "s" on midnite like I have here) anyways, hope you enjoy visiting my humble little gallery :)