It was definitively NMC!
But for some reasons I dont understand LTC was the one which was getting more valuable.
Namecoin wasn't intended as a currency to buy things, but rather, as a currency to buy key=>value pairs in the blockchain.
The value of namecoin depends upon how much demand there is to store things in their blockchain.
With OpenNic now making it easy for regular people to resolve .bit domains, it is possible that demand will go up.
There also are some none DNS related reasons to use namecoin that may cause a price increase, like that new web directory that is using the u/ and i/ namespace within namecoin.