Yesterday I was sitting down at my local shop and a brand new collector came in. He was looking for an expensive box or two to bust, and he settled on the recently released National Treasures. In his first box, he literally had one of the worst boxes I have seen in a while. Almost a complete loss. Second box though, was a bit different. Inside was the Andrew Wiggins Rookie Patch Auto /25, easily one of the top cards in the product. This is the power that Treasures has.

Look at the prices on some of the major cards:

2015 National Treasures Andrew Wiggins Rookie Patch Auto – Will end for more than Luck and Wilson combined!

2015 National Treasures Nikola Mirotic Rookie Patch Auto /10

2015 National Treasures Jabari Parker Rookie Patch Auto – Blew his knee out, will still sell for more than Trout Chrome Auto

2015 National Treasures Chris Paul Notable Nicknames Auto

2015 National Treasures Jabari Parker Logoman /5

On the other hand, the rest of the boxes are filled with a combination of nicer hits and relics that wont earn back the box price, with stickers galore and Panini points. In fact, we watched a few other cases get opened, and very few really nice cards came out. There was another Wiggins, but the sticker and small patch probably wouldnt break even on the box price. Overall, everyone in the shop agreed the break was a bloodbath. In fact, these types of situations tend to happen more often than not with Treasures, especially for people who arent lucky enough to pull on card autos of the top rookies in the product.

Treasures has paled in comparison to Immaculate and Flawless over the last few years, and that might be putting it lightly. The addition of Panini points as a replacement for a hit is a fucking disaster, and that doesnt even begin to describe the condition of some of the cards. Dont get me wrong, hit one of the big guys and you paid for your case and then some.

I honestly dont know what to say here, because the boxes are about as schizophrenic as they have ever been. There are a lot of cool looking cards, but there are also a ton of cards that are better reserved for Prestige. Immaculate, at least to me, remains the top product in the game, and yet, here we are. even more shocking to me is how much people put value in the design, as I think the vertical orientation is no less than 100 times worse than the extremely rare horizontal ones. The ugly design game is strong with NT, and that doesnt seem to matter.

These types of situations DO NOT exist in Football and they DO NOT exist in Baseball. However, with Hockey and Basketball, they seem to be frequent in the way cards are valued. An international sport brings international collectors, and therefore a much larger market for the cards. How much of this product’s problems are hidden by the number of people that collect the cards? I would say a lot.

Exquisite NBA remains the best product in basketball to this day. It was 100% on card, it had Jordan and Lebron, and it delivered some crazy fucking hits. Treasures seems like a cheap knock off, and yet that doesnt seem to bother anyone. Well, maybe not until you see this video.