Nothing beat the original hardware.
Having said that, I will say it depends on how truly serious you are about collecting for the system. SNES stuff is still fairly easy to come by (some games more so than others). Plus, on the Wii, the games are emulated without very much filtering, leaving you with a very pixelated image (not that there's a thing in the world wrong with that). Using actual hardware, however, may obscure some of that, but that applies only to older CRT televisions. If you have all modern flatscreen HDTVs in the house, you won't be gaining those benefits that an actual console will net you.
That being said, yes, the Wii Virtual Console is cheaper and, if it has all (or most of) the games you want and you have no desire to collect the original hardware, go that route. If you have any interest at all in collecting for the system, drop the extra cash and go for it. And if you have an old CRT kicking about, most especially go for it. The classic experience is priceless.














