No. We came into this wealth via robbing someone who themselves was incredibly wealthy, it's effectively a one off injection. We have zero income ourselves so we shouldn't waste it on things that aren't effective for a first year student.
Yeah, this is essentially your 'wow, you antagonized someone with way more power and money than you, here's the corresponding boost to make your situation survivable'. You're unlikely to come into this much money until later, and one of the big problems every mage has is that if you want to make money, you need to sacrifice skill progression. If you go make a few hundred Draughts of Wakefulness, you'll learn nothing, but you'll spend a
long time doing so. You'll end up cashed-up, but that's time your opponents can use to level Skills, learn Spells, and invent new Recipes. Money has an opportunity cost - in this case the opportunity cost is having a powerful person hate you.
I'd like to note that the chain of events went something like this: Willpower burnt on Laila roll, allowing a +10 versus the next Thomas Action. Ulos then rolled 23 vs Thomas's 26. If the thread hadn't opted for the Laila reroll, Ulos's test would be so much ink and his ability to get extra tutoring would have never occurred. Having a powerful rival has the ability to fuck you out of things at pivotal moments (especially if they know when those pivotal moments are, like tests and so on).
Alchemical items are really valuable, though. The average Alchemist graduates from Draughts of Wakefulness pretty quick and goes on to more powerful personal buffing - your average Alchemist doesn't sell potions the same way a Runesmith might sell runes. A Runesmith might try and forge a powerful Artifact, fail, and end up with something that's still saleable due to it merely failing in one aspect or another.
The Minor Arcana of Protection is one such item. Protecting against one attack only is very low-tier for an Artifact, but someone had the bright notion to tie five of these rings together and call it a fully-fledged Artifact. People might buy it because it offers attacks against most major vectors but doesn't cost a lot of power - meaning you can absorb one surprise attack and set up your own defenses.
Talking about the various plans so far:
Plan Neptune - Sell the Alchemy stuff, which may have repercussions next term (if we take Alchemy), with the understanding that power now is better than power in ten weeks. Getting items that boost skill rolls means that long-term progression gets a boost, and training the 'run away' skill is always good for a weak mage. In terms of portable power for confrontations, though, it offers very little. Essentially gambling that we can do ok in the short-term and win by just getting better and better in the long-term.
Plan Think of the Future - Similar. Trains Mind Magic, which is probably your strongest offensive option in the short term against weak mages and normals. Otherwise, gets the Skill boosts and a few Draughts for emergencies. This is more powerful than it might seem - it's not unreasonable to be put in a bad situation (especially if you start locking more Actions to get superior progression) where you just
need an extra Action to prevent a crisis.
Plan Zaratustra - Given our direction, the Skill items certainly look highly cost-effective. Much like Neptune, takes the Runic Binding Circle for maximum Skill boosts. Takes a minor offensive option with itching powder, though, which may be useful. Almost the same as Neptune, swapping out much of the Tutoring for options that offer immediate power. This is not a bad choice either - given you almost lost a permanent powerful Training Action (and possible ally) due to Thomas's interference, having counters and offensive options on hands could be crucial in saving your bacon.
Plan Crafts & Tutoring - Uses a
lot of Actions in the future to get a bunch of low-level Skills. Nonmagical skills are
generally less useful than magical ones in the long run (excepting diplomatic ones, for the simple reason that they can give you influence over mages). Takes eight Actions to complete, which is over a week's worth of Actions. This is not as short-term as it might seen - a Skill with only 3 points in it (the average result of most of these Training Rolls from zero) can be applied to any Action to which it is applicable. This is a reasonably cheap way to power up - five Skills with five points cost one-third as much as one Skill with twenty-five points in it. If you're in a situation that can apply all those Skills, you've got a very cheap power-up indeed. Of course, the big advantage of training a few specific Skills is that you can choose situations and Spells that suit them, which isn't really the case for a mishmash of lots of skills.