Two Words: Merged Mining
You don't have to pick one when you can mine them all (except litecoin)
You can only merge mine on alts that have it enabled. You can't merge mine with TRC, FRC, LTC + more. You can, however, merge mine NMC.
Well bitparking pool mines NMC, DVC, IXC, and of course BTC.
Summary of these alt chains:
Not Merge minable
TRC - What made this special again
FRC - 80% to foundation + Demurage = pumped dumped and forgotten in 3 months, miners already jumping ship
LTC - Decent value for an alt, shame no one want to build decent apps for it
Merged minable
NMC - oldest altchain, blockchain intended as store of data (great for .onion and torrent magnet links forget .bit), cheap useful (disclosure I buy these occasionally)
DVC - Worth so little they make you feel rich, a core group buys these on markets to support their value
IXC - See TRC, probably never going to be worth anything
BTC - What 98% of people try to exchange the others for