Having started my machine life with a mini mill, let me tell you a few things.
1: it taught me a lot on how to work within the limitations of a machine. I broke the plastic gears within 10 minutes of owning it (no, in not kidding... I sheared a gear off with a small fly cutter on my very first cut). Lessons that helped me understand the bigger machinery. If your first lathe is a 10hp gisholt (literally!), It'll be more difficult to learn and understand feeds and speeds and the like because a machine that big will just eat up whatever you throw at it without complaining. You'll be breaking inserts or tooling and not fully understanding why. Where a small machine will give up long before the tool will forcing you to understand how to cut properly and efficiently.
2: I regretted spending so much on such a small machine I almost immediately wanted to upgrade. From the first day I wanted a bigger mill.
3: for some reason the small machines retain their value incredibly well. There are 1001 upgrade kits available to buy or plans to use to make parts to make the mini machines much better. They're not expensive to make yourself, and as such, the machines retain probably 90% of their value. So, per say, if you put a mini machine on credit and paid it off, you can sell it for cash for almost the amount you spent. Giving you cash in hand to buy a bigger machine. Which is exactly what I did. I bought the Craftex mini mill on sale for $1100, used it, learned how to machine, made parts for it (belt drive, dro kits, power feed, etc), sold it a year later for $900. I had some extra cash on hand from a job and I went and over spent on my current mill.
So there's pros and cons... They are toys... They have their place... But I'd suggest not chucking up the mini mill in the gisholt as a joke... But it would look funny...
If you have the spare time in life, if it were me, I'd take Ken's mill and rebuild it.
That's my two cents anyways.
