From the first sentence of https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/intro-to-ethereum/

"A blockchain is a public database that is updated and shared across many computers in a network." it's really a very reasonable comparison.

Both are cool and im interested in them and like them for what they are, but I think it's wrong to say that traditional databases don't have any advantage of any kind. For a blockchain to have any extra security you need a bunch of different nodes controlled by independent parties running the software which means it's necessarily less efficient, and you need some sort of incentive system to keep them wanting to run the thing which is necessarily more expensive.

If you're not able to trust any one entity to keep the database running, being trustless is Huge, but for this situation I still don't see how it's different from a Mongo DB that has the same behavior as the blockchain - ie. the only operations are new serial numbers being added and transfers to and between owners. The only additional failure case that the blockchain fixes is that someone gets access to the Mongo db's password or the server that it's running on and changes things there. No trade school grads or front line workers need to have any privileges.