I recently bought an SKS. I played with a Mini fairly extensively last year, though never have owned one.
To me, the appeal of the 7.62x39 is twofold. If you handload (which I don’t, yet) there’s the theoretical potential to load very accurate 30-30 style hunting or target loads out of a modern gun that can use spitzer bullets. I have a CZ-527 and that gun is accurate, with a detachable box mag and set trigger. There’s also the appeal of very cheap steel case plinking ammo (or even hunting ammo.) In other words, great if you handload, and “good enough” for almost everything, and very affordable, if you don’t.
The Mini-30 is expensive, not a tackdriver by any means, and can’t use the cheap ammo. So to me, it’s very hard to see why anyone wants one unless it’s just for nostalgia. (Which is fine, if that’s what you like.) I’ll grant they’re better looking than an AR, so I might be more tempted by the Mini-14, particularly as brass case 5.56 is readily available and cheap.
The SKS is a sweet gun. Fun to shoot, low recoil, not so heavy as to make it impractical to carry afield, fairly accurate even with Wolf ammo (the design is inherently more accurate than an AK, and Wolf is probably better ammo than the surplus of yesteryear.) A 10 round fixed mag makes it inherently less “tactical” than a 30 round AK or AR, but... in the civilian world there’s very little that takes more than 10 rounds, and stripper clips do make for a very fast reload too. And the fixed mag is arguably more reliable/one less thing to lose.
The SKS is also, as the icing on the cake, about 1/2 the cost of the Mini, in many places. A new Mini will probably set you back 800. A nice SKS can usually be found for $400 or even less with a bit of patience.