Just today I read a pretty nice article about ethereum mining on ati graphics cards and it seems to be still pretty lucrative to mine with 'standard' gaming gpus. That seems to be the reason, the latest ati generation is sold out, because they provide the same hashrate as the nvidia gtx1070 series - for half the price...

As I'm currently planning on re-using my gaming rig, i'll try to mine ethereum... If this proves to be not as cost-effective as i'd like, then i might simply buy in.

@jkl: Yeah, even the people who did that are biting their asses right now - because most of them cashed out after it's rise above 300 dollars, because they either wanted some new hardware or because of fear of a bubble. And then there is my buddy who had like 30 bitcoins mined in the early days and got his wallet stolen.