A Babe Ruth card is pretty meaningless, too. It's hardly great to look at but you can derive pleasure from knowing you own it for some reason.
They’re valuable to collectors as there is a finite supply of them. There is literally an infinite supply of NFTs, and the works they are a pointer to can be cloned digitally. There is no comparison.
There is a finite supply of a given NFT and infinite cards can be printed by someone else, you just only care for those minted by a particular authority in either case.
You don't need to own the card to do that. Just google image search and look at your screen. If you like cardboard cards, print one on cardboard.