Whereas with hardware in hand you'd be delighted to pay more in electricity than it was making for those 4 years? Don't bother with the "resale" argument, what's a $5000 batch 3 avalon realistically worth to a non-n00b these days, 1 year after introduction, $250? that's 95% depreciation in a year.

Anyway, there's arguments in favor of hardware in hand, and there's arguments in favor of reasonably priced mining by the gighash, and I looked into this sector and determined that pbmining would appear to be the best deal in this space at the moment. Like it or not, mining seems to be headed towards doing things in bulk quantities, "retail" pricing on power and hardware is looking barely breakeven.