Just about to buy some points speculatively and i was curious to run my reasoning past AFFers --- although the main downside is that I'd be spending $ now that I won't utilise for say 12 months (based on covid-19 travel restrictions), there actually seems to be little 'risk' in the purchase (unless Marriott ran into serious trouble, your points expired due to lack of account activity, or there was a significant devaluation before you could use the points and it would need to be 'significant' to have too big an impact).
The reason for low 'risk' is the ability to transfer Marriott points to airlines (and a range of airlines that are typically hard to access) - according to my calculations, if you had to transfer the points to airlines and could utilise the points for approximately 3 cents / point (not difficult for business class), you would break-even on the original $ spent (and still wind up with a relatively cheap J fare, that whilst not as good as normal points use, at least you wouldn't be losing $).
As a rough example, we often stay in Category 5 Marriott hotels during peak season, which would now be 40,000 points / night. For 5 nights (with 1 night free), that's 160,000 points. That would currently cost $1350USD, approximately $2,000AUD. Transferring those points to airlines would be 66,666 points. Used at 3 cents / point, you would regain the original value mitigating your original spend.
An assumption above is that I could use the 66,666 points for an effective J fare, but given the airlines Marriott partners with, I could probably transfer them to an airline in which I already have points.
Does anyone see any serious flaws with my logic?!