lightninglad

Did the market suddenly decide they prefer that to #18? Or are the market buyers too dumb to know the difference. Apparently so. I have a few 18's and actually pulled a few 17's the other day out of my LCS's dollar bins. Am I missing something? :shrug: From day one MoS #17 has always been the more valuable book due to its much lower print run. Nothing has really changed. You can check the recent debates on the issue: http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=6818071#Post6818071

Those say "Direct Edition" so they can't be newsstand. I believe those are just the standard editions that were released and were a dollar cheaper. You had to pay an extra buck for that sweet embossing.

I have Diamond sales rankings but no print run numbers: September 1992 MoS 17 was #97 on their sales chart. All Superman titles were low. Adventures didn't even make top 100. October 1992 MoS 18 moves up to #77. November 1992 MoS 19 jumps way up to #19 It's not quite as big of a difference between 17 and 18 as I would of thought, but def shows 17 was a lower print run. I also wonder if more newsstand copies of 18 survived. MoS 17's may have been pulled by the time people caught on to the whole Superman's being killed thing.

I can't provide you with numbers but I can provide my experience from collecting during that time. Everybody knew a big story was starting with MoS 18, I'm sure retailers ordered accordingly, but the cameo books completely took people by surprise. When people finally caught on to who it was in those cameos shots, those books quickly disappeared, with MoS 17 being the one highly sought after. It immediately jumped to be $15-$20 book. I can't give you the numbers, but you could find tons of MoS 18's but MoS 17's were very hard to come by. IMO MoS 17 from the very start has always been the more valuable book. I know we like to place rules on these types of things but I think each case is unique. In this case, the cameo is harder to find. Plus MoS 18 isn't really much of a first appearance. He's hidden in a suit the entire issue. If you were to show the average person who knew what Doomsday looks like, but knew nothing about comics, the cover to MoS 18 they'd say... "That's not Doomsday!" So call the issues whatever you like but at the end of day I think 17 is and always will be the more valuable of the two, though 18 will close the gap some. There is room for both to be worth owning. It doesn't have to be a war of one against the other.

I've been trying to put together a Doomsday/Death of Superman collection of printings for some time now. Here are all the printings and my experience searching for them: Doomsday Cameo Issues: MoS 17 SM 73 AoS 496 Action 683 These all had second prints and can be hard to find, especially MoS 17. A raw copy sold for $70 on ebay a couple of days ago Doomsday Seven Part Story MoS 18 had five printings. The second print is fairly easy to find. I know a lot has been made of the fifth printing lately but I've found printings 3 to 5 equally hard to find. None of them are too rare but being a key issue it's nice to have all five printings. JL 69 had four printings. The second is fairly common, third and fourth prints are very hard to find SM 74 had four printings as well. The second is easy to find. The third is relatively hard and the fourth can be very hard to find. AoS 497 had three printings. Once again the second isn't hard to come by but the third printing is. Action 684 and MoS 19 had three printings and all except for the first are very hard to find, especially the MoS 19 third printing. SM 75 had four printings but all of them are very easy to find. Mass produced being Superman's death and all. Hopefully this helps someone in their hunting. It's a fun collection to try and put together.

+1 Her last mission was 1956. How old is she?? The story is set in the 70's, I believe 1973 to be exact. Based on the fact that her first mission was in 1949 I was guessing that she's in her 40's

Any guesses on what this Baltimore Con edition went for? http://www.ebay.com/itm/CRYPTOZOIC-MAN-1-COMIC-SS-Chen-Walt-Flanagan-Zapcic-Johnson-BCC-PREVIEW-CON-/151179973387?pt=US_Comic_Books&hash=item233307530b