The year was 2011. It was during the first Mt. Gox bubble (that popped and went down to $1 due to a hack). We just thought it was cool. We mined. We also got banned from Fry's. I'll just leave it at that.

Anyways, I would suggest picking up a little bit to play around with / understand the system first. Once you get the hang of it, buy in, and buy in with the assumption that you'll lose it all. :)

Also be sure to use safe-storage practices if you hold any large amounts. Keep an air-gapped wallet to hold any large amounts of coin (a raspberry pi or cheapy netbook may be good for this). Encrypt encrypt encrypt. Always use 2-FA wherever possible. Never keep significant amounts of coinage on any online wallet or market, no matter how established they are.

You can also mine, which in some ways is less risky - esp. if you're mining a currency where graphics cards are still viable (you can always resell a graphics card - you can't resell an ASIC). I think ASIC-mining is a fool's game unless you yourself are the manufacturer.

Check out: http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency to get an idea of how viable it is.