I have about 4.5 BTC that I mined in mid-to-late 2011, using an nVidia GPU whenever my PC happened to be on and idle. At the time, I was just about breaking eve

I have about 4.5 BTC that I mined in mid-to-late 2011, using an nVidia GPU whenever my PC happened to be on and idle. At the time, I was just about breaking even compared to the extra cost of power; since then, the exchange rate has increased enough that if I were to sell, it would end up having been nicely profitable. Unfortunately, the time when you could pull that off without a large up-front investment seems to be long past. Personally, there's no way I'd consider sinking a large amount of money into mining hardware at this point. If you believe BTC has a promising future, it's much safer to just buy coins. (EDIT: but of course, given the volatility, that only makes sense as a long-term plan.)