I would stay away from the virtual mining thing. If you wanna mine, just buy the hardware, mine with it and once it becomes unprofitable, sell it on ebay. Trust me, alot of dumbasses will buy old mining equipment with no understanding of ROI.
Let's see if it stays this way, I see lots of auctions on Ebay these days asking crazy prices for old Block Eruptors, and most seem to be selling. Looks like everyone is jumping on bitcoins to get a piece of the action.