I don't know about "treasured", but pine is nice! The main thing is that it's soft. Furniture made from pine will dent if you look at it. My coffee table is something I made early on when I was learning and it's made of white fir, which isn't far off mechanically from pine; the grain lines are dramatic when stained and it looks really cool, but you have to baby it similar to a white pine.

I am a big fan of ash, but the bugs are going to make that very hard to source going forward.