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Im pretty sure the actual, physical Trading card games like MtG and Pokemon gave us all these games with card mechanics in the late 90s/early 2000s.
Culdcept (1997), Baiten Kaitos (2003), Kingdom Hearts - Chain of Memories (2004). Then the card games weren’t as popular for a bit, then the digital ones died out.
And then Blizzard released Hearthstone in 2014. I haven’t played the other ones to know for sure, but I believe Yu-Gi-Oh Master duels crafting system can directly trace it’s roots to it. Trade cards for dust of a specific rarity, dust from 3 can form a new card, Shiny cards give enough dust on their own for any card, etc. .
I like your funny words, magic man!