LTC - Lite coin is the silver to bit coins gold.  

I'm in this pool: https://hypernova.pw/

They have an awesome interface and an android app you can use to monitor your workers when you are not at your computer.

You guys are in luck.  There is another 150 page plus poll of the experienced members and the coin voted most likely to succeed and profit in the future was QUARK.

Here is some info about it:
http://www.qrk.cc/
http://www.quarkcoins.com/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=260031.0
http://mgstoneset.wix.com/quark

Granted the current price is around .07 a coin but the kicker is that it can ONLY be mined with a CPU.  Meaning that it can be mined by anyone, and it keeps the big dollar investors out of the game.  CPU mining is extremely low power consumption, and easy to set up and use.

I just set up some miners tonight and already have a few coins to show for it.

If you want to see the going rate for alt-coins I suggest either of these sites:

http://coinmarketcap.com/
http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency

Well I don't know about "value" but they are worth some actual money.  So far I have sold duplicate Humble Bundle games for Doge, and have purchased Guild Wars 2 gold, and a fossil for Doge.  I was mining Doge directly, but found that I could get significantly more Doge by mining COYE and converting to Doge via 0daycoin exchange.  Note, this was before the COYE devs quit and closed the exchange.