Remember how there is coin collectors, and the coins are valued for their pure numismatic value.
I think coins with novelty names can create a demand to collect coins, so while technologically nothing new, it opens up a new market for altcoins.
Some may know I'm working on creating HayekCoin for the sole purpose of an educational experience and thought it'd be fitting to have a coin to commemorate an economist who wrote about the idea of competing currencies decades ago.
(I got most of the coding done, it's mainly the gensis block is where I'm stuck at, if anyone would like to help pm me, anyone curious here is the source:
https://github.com/alexmerced/hcoin)
But this open up the room for all sorts of other novelty coins:
RothbardCoin - You can't tell me this wouldn't have a huge demand to be collected by Anarcho-Capitalist (Can see it being used with Bitcoin at Porcfest)
420Coin - The official currency of California and Colorado :p
again not all altcoins have to be technologically new (they probably do if they are seriously trying to be a real commercial alternative to bitcoin) but there are other niches and ways bitcoin/litecoin forks can be used.
