A form of it, yes.
However I think there’s a lot more to it than that. I’d argue that there are a few things that make something unadulterated gambling:
- Making money is the main reason for participating
- Players gamble with real money and get paid out real money or something controvertible into real money instantly and with next to no effort (e.g. chips)
- Other than the experience, players receive nothing for your money if you lose
- The game is rigged such that over the long run, players losing money is a certainty
- The “house” is a business which offers nothing more than the opportunity to occasionally profit if you get lucky
Buying booster packs from TPCi or a retail store certainly fulfills some of these criteria. The game is rigged, Pokemon is making a profit off of you. For many people, opening packs in the hopes of pulling a hit and making money is their main reason for participating.
Other criteria are more unclear. You pay real money for packs, but you get out cards. Cards do have a “market value” but there are a few steps to go through before you can get cash for the card. You have to list it on eBay, ship it, wait for the transfer to go through, or go to a specialty store and sell it. You can also participate in Pokemon collecting without the goal of profiting off of opening the packs.
Others don’t apply. You still get 10 cards for your money even if you don’t get a hit, these days that includes 2 reverses and a holo per pack. Pokemon also isn’t a casino, they offer games and merchandise based on their intellectual property that they created.
I think these reasons are why to us, booster packs seem much more palatable than something like third-party mystery boxes. For example, a company like Courtyard offering $1000 online “Pokemon mystery packs” gets much closer to unadulterated gambling. You can instantly sell your pulled card at 80% of market, which makes any card easily controvertible into money. The company itself has no intellectual property and only offers the chance of getting lucky on a good pull. Sure, you might get something if you “lose,” but you can’t exactly collect from Courtyard online rips––the available cards have no coherence or collectibility. Making money is really the only reason why you would buy one.