Do people actually get the forks from time to time and sell them for Bitcoin?
Price of fork is significantly lower than Bitcoin.
I'm thinking that maybe it would be a bit risky since I reckon you'll need to put your private key to access them.
This. When you want to claim a fork, you have to expose your Bitcoin private key. It is risky somewhat and in bad case, you can lose your Bitcoin. Don't want to claim forks, don't know how to do this, and at the end, losing your Bitcoin. It sucks!