I think mining is much more interesting for me, you can learn much knowledge about this coins, how it works and meet many friends in this community.
Mining is good but this is not a good time to join the mining community because the GPU is very expensive right now. Wait for a big crash and newbies miners will sell all of their bitcoin. And then, we will collect cheap GPU to mine
Theres an interest with mining though the competition for it is high so I wouldnt begin mining any Altcoins. It doesnt really matter if the coin is a new coin because theres guys out there that wait for new coins then they mine the coins themselves or their team mine coins and they make a profit while they wait for another coin to get launched. I would just purchase coins so you could get more for your money.