You can get DeVCoin at probably its lowest price ever or thereabouts right now, and unlike those others you mentioned it is not one of the recent endless stream of scamcoins.
Are any of the others you mentioned even securable blockchains at all, or just scrypt etc waiting for miners to gangbang and/or 51% them?
-MarkM-
Why Devcoin though? Bitcoin can probably do the job of Devcoin just fine in the future.
Actually I do not know of any exchanges anymore that have DVC/USD nor USD/DVC so devcoin is no longer a coin you can invest dollars into anyway.
If the original poster had provided a list of coins they are able to buy with dollars that would maybe help, since I would suggest the first coin to invest in if you are thinking of going on to branch out into things that are not being sold for dollars would be something like bitcoin or litecoin, because many coins are available to buy using those that are not available to buy using dollars.
Then once equipped with some litecoin or bitcoin, go on to start a thread asking what to invest bitcoin in or what to invest litecoin in...
-MarkM-