Absolutely! I'd say almost my entire collection is made up from buying cards individually... I bought a few Dice to qualify for the airdrops but that's really it. The pack-buying is a serious long-term play for CL though... with 15M packs I have to assume it'll take a while for them to sell out... but when they do...

The SPS airdrop points for holding packs is 300... but a normal common DEC value is 5... so on average you'll do a lot better collecting SPS by holding the packs.