Real coins ideally have a more significant standing than ICOs. If you're trying to play it "safe" with your money, I would say that you should stick to investing in actual coins.

ICOs on the other hand are extremely risky, but in the case that the project takes off, you can end up with much larger gains. Overall, if you're just getting into investing, diversifying across ICOs that you research could be a good idea. Otherwise, I would stick to actual coins just because of how many ico scams have been popping up.