If you just want to play around mining would be also a start but requires time, reading and learning of course. Each day new coins pop up, are easy to mine the first days and some even gain some remarkable value, especially CPU only coins. ZOI for instance. Mined it with my i5 the first night after it was published and got 1100 ZOI. One is now worth $0.17, enough money to play around a little. But like said, that way takes time and a lot of reading.
For playing with altcoins i use
https://www.cryptopia.co.nz/