Depends on what you'd use the points/miles for and how much that is worth to you. The real worth is no more than it would cost to buy whatever it is, but may be less.

Example: Two months ago I redeemed 200,000 AA miles for two round-trip business class tickets BOS-CDG. Economy tickets were over $650 each at the time. I probably would have paid about $1,500 each for the J tickets: way less than the published fare, but a good deal more than the economy fare. That made the miles worth 1.5¢ each, or very slightly less since I would have earned miles on a paid ticket. Since I don't know of a cash-back card that offers a rebate that high, taking the miles in that case worked out better.

Folks sometimes use the published fare to evaluate how much they got for their miles. As any economist will tell you, if you wouldn't pay it, it's irrelevant. Its major value in this context is to make people feel good about the great deal they got by using miles.

If SAAver award seats hadn't been available, I wouldn't have used 400,000 miles for that trip. We would have gone anyway, but in the small seats.

So: If you go for the miles, how will you use them? And what is that worth to you?