20-year-old Los Angeles Lakers guard Talen Horton-Tucker showed a lot of promise during the preseason, especially with his 33-point performance against the Los Angeles Clippers.

A huge frenzy of buyers looking for Horton-Tucker's cards flooded both eBay and card groups across multiple platforms, skyrocketing his cards to unrealistic and absurd prices for a mere rotational player who had barely even had a crack in the lineup.

Compared to other young players, THT appears in slightly fewer card sets. Though featured in brands like Hoops, Donruss, and Optic, he is excluded in fan favorites such as Prizm.

As a replacement for the go-to card to invest in, which is typically the Prizm silver, in Tucker's case it became his Optic Holo card. At its peak, the PSA 10 version of the rookie card had been selling consistently for over $500 on eBay.

With Talen Horton-Tucker currently not yet fully cracking the rotation, it has been evident that his prices have dipped from the initial hype reached before the regular season started. He has, though, put up a few nice performances in the games he has been able to get quality minutes when Frank Vogel has turned to him.

During his most recent game on Monday, THT contributed immensely in a 31-point blowout victory against the Golden State Warriors. The shooting guard dropped 18 points, 10 assists and four rebounds while shooting an efficient 7-of-10 from the floor.

On another occasion against the Phoenix Suns, Tucker also dropped a double-digit outing, ending with 16 points. Though it was not enough for the empty-handed Lakers that night to end up with the win, it was a strong effort.

Still, overall it has been a slap back to reality for all those who invested heavily in Talen Horton-Tucker prior to the season. In this case, future stardom may not be the right expectations for someone who is still so raw and unproven on a championship roster.

Even with all of these factors and a decline in the value of most of his cards, Horton-Tucker's prices have still remained pretty high when compared to other young prospects. Listed comps of his raw Optic Holo rookie card are still fetching around $55-70 on eBay.

Given the huge community of Lakers collectors around the globe, THT cards will still be a commodity that people will want to collect in the near future, as he is one of the only young prospects on the current roster. He has shown just enough flashes of having a high upside as a key contributor going forward, even if he's not a franchise player, though there is the possibility of a trade.

From an investment standpoint, it probably was not the smartest thing to spend that much on a young role player with sporadic minutes. But we have been proven wrong before, and only time will tell how good Talen Horton-Tucker can be in the future.