Well I am not taking any big risk here, I collect all I can, but when you think about it a lot of people thought BTC was a joke, LTC, CNC, FTC, well people are making money off of them, I can vouch, I made quite a bit off these coins people thought were "junk".
this is very true. when I saw litecoin last year I thought it was a joke. People in Bitcoin community also thought it was joke, but look at what it is now. Same things being seen in many other area: semiconductor, hard-drive, dot-com, now social media. The alt coins are still in the hype phase, of course I am pretty certain, at some point it will fall, but who cares. People ride the waves, and when it collapse, they will just find another one to hype.