The second season of The Last of Us premieres April 13, 2025. Based on the famous video game of the same name, this TV show on Max has received widespread critical acclaim, with Rotten Tomatoes giving it a 96% approval rating and a 96% audience score. 4.7 million viewers watched the first episode on its premiere date and almost 40 million watched within two months. It eventually became Max's most watched debut season ever.
The Last of Us is one of several video game franchises that have made a successful leap to the comic book collecting market. In fact, Dark Horse Comics actually released The Last of Us: American Dreams #1 two months prior to the launch of the video game in 2013. Accordingly, the first time we ever see Joel Miller and Ellie -- the two main protagonists of The Last of Us -- in any medium is actually in this comic.
There's also a very limited supply of this issue with only 412 universal blue label copies on the CGC Census (and 6,032 total copies ordered by retailers). Compare that to another Modern Age key issue published around the same time -- Ultimate Fallout #4 (2011) -- that has 16,985 universal blue label copies on the Census.
Due to the game's growing impact on pop culture and a very limited supply of this first issue, it's no surprise that graded copies generally sell for a premium on the secondary market. Let's take a take a closer look at the value of the most common grade on the CGC Census for this issue: a 9.6.
While the 30-day average of $400 is substantially lower than its one-year average of $517, its current FMV, unlike many other Modern Age key issues, is way above what it sold for prior to the "comic boom" in 2021 (around $100). It's actually done a nice job of holding on to its value ever since we entered a bear market in 2022. And the show appears to provide strong marketing for this comic; in January 2023, shortly after The Last of Us debuted on Max, this 9.6 sold for $700 on eBay:
With only 102 on the CGC Census, 9.8s are even more rare. According to GoCollect, the FMV of a 9.8 is $1,450 though the most recent 9.8 sold for only $786 back in May 2024. 9.8s don't sell very often; there's only been one confirmed sale during the past year:
High-grade raw copies of The Last of Us: American Dreams #1 have sold on eBay in the $80 to $150 range; with such a constrained supply of graded copies, this is, in my opinion, a better book to purchase raw since there's a larger supply of ungraded copies and then perhaps grade later.
