[banannaise]

> I think there's a massive difference between card packs - which have been as you describe for decades - and the recent boom in sports betting.

There is, until there isn't. MTG has been leaning drastically into tiered and ultra-premium products. Increasingly, it feels like Magic design and product is focused on extracting money from the whales at the price of hollowing out their playerbase.

It's difficult to draw a hard line between wholesome collecting and lootbox gambling, but it's hard not to notice that even the bastions of the collectible industry have been aggressively moving in the direction of the latter.

[Ekaros]

I have never been sure if collecting is wholesome. I think Pohl did show it as one example of rampant consumerist addiction in one of the books(can't remember which of the ones with marketing guys).

I would guess that collecting goes beyond wholesome once finding the products comes really hard and there is very high prices and extremely low rates involved.