How would you have a digital collectible without blockchain? The alternative is just a private database somewhere that depends on the whims of a company/individual for its continued existence.
People that are fans of NFTs and crypto gaming imagine a world where someone has a token contract with the hash of a public key that corresponds to a private key that only they have somewhere in it registering their ownership of a hash of a file with art in it cryptographically signed by an artist, and that system proving that they alone own the original version of the art. But these are fictions, just as copyright is fiction, a legal fiction but fiction all the same, and all any of this does is demonstrate it, make it more plain. And I'm happy about that, art is useless if it isn't on a wall, and art on a wall looks just as pretty printed. Who owns a picture doesn't matter to me, or to anyone really, if I find it pleasant I'll hang it up, and if it's digital art then mine will look just as nice as the print hanging on the wall of the person who paid 36 ether for the privilege of doing so.