The good token player will cost you 12-24 Tokens. It will probably take you additional tokens to train him up to 5-6* as you need to buy green packs. So it will cost you more than 50T to get his quality to Scout lvl and maintain it there. Taking that into consideration, if you already have 50T then might as well get a 22 yo scout.

The free one you can sign and sell off for cash.

Sometimes I do take academy players in (the token ones) if it is someone I need. I just give him additional training before and after matches to earn additional SP