No, it has a monetary value, But you can't resell it.
People spend thousands on skins, with some of the items only accessible by repeatedly rolling the dice on a loot box. (Others have price ceilings for direct purchases).
The closed nature of the economy just means you can only purchase from the one person who is setting the price and you have no ability to trade it back in for cash.
Magic cards you can resell your cards to another player at a later date. You can't in Apex Legends.
It has value sure but it's not monetary if you can't convert it to money. These things have no monetary value. So you should know going in you will never make your money back. You will only get better or worse game items.
That's farther than gambling than the trading card model.
> So you should know going in you will never make your money back.
You don't require this to be sucked into destructive tendencies in the same way as gambling. This isn't a logical choice, it's kids getting manipulated by the game into purchasing these lootboxes.
I erred in my use of monetary value, I mean that kids are very willing to spend lots and lots of money to get these skins - just as much as magic, if not more.
As I originally commented, I don't think magic is a good thing either, and Hearthstone is basically the equivalent of it in video game form - but at least you can sell out of Magic at a later date, and there is some form of market for trading old cards with others. Hell, you can even just be given your deck by a friend - this is not possible in hearthstone or fifa or Apex Legends (for cosmetics), you can't with games like Hearthstone and Apex Legends, you never get your money back, and people are just as willing to drop lots of cash on it as Magic.
People spend thousands on skins, with some of the items only accessible by repeatedly rolling the dice on a loot box. (Others have price ceilings for direct purchases).
The closed nature of the economy just means you can only purchase from the one person who is setting the price and you have no ability to trade it back in for cash.
Magic cards you can resell your cards to another player at a later date. You can't in Apex Legends.