Can anyone enlighten me as to why test coins are so hard to come by? There should be millions of them flying gaily around. Is everyone secretly hoping they'll be worth something some day?
it is a possibility but i think there are mainly 3 reasons for the scarcity of testnet coins:
1. developers who use them to test, throw away the keys afterwards without bothering to send the coins back to faucets or give it to others. so practically these coins are brunt.
2. a lot of coins are burnt, i've burnt at least 2 tbtc so far by sending it to bad scripts when i was testing stuff.
3. scammers who have been accumulating tbtc and selling it to some newbies who may fall for it. although this one is very rare since nowadays testnet wallets give a big ass warning to the user that it is worthless.