James Chillcott, MTG Fast Finance

MTG Fast Finance Podcast: Bonus Interview w/ Dan Bock of PowerNine

11 Comments

Dan Bock is one of the most seasoned veterans of the MTGFinance scene. Originally a binder grinder and team member with Bob Maher’s JapanMagic team in the late 90’s, Dan has also qualified for the Pro Tour four times, including an infamous appearance in 2001 at Pro Tour Tokyo with a deck made up of nothing but Arena basic lands.

That’s a LOT of Black Lotuses.

He later started the Netherworld Games retail shop in the mid-west Magic hot bed of Madison, Wisconsin, USA, alongside former partners Sam Black et al. Striking out on his own in the early 2000’s, Dan built up a very successful Ebay Power Seller business with over 300,000 feedback and millions in platform sales. Via the PowerNine.com brand Dan, with the support of his loving wife Alex, also runs retail booths at major Magic tournaments across the United States, as well as providing consignment style retail services for dozens of collectibles stores across the country. As an admin in the 40, 000 member strong High End Magic group on Facebook, Dan also maintains a near legendary presence in the high end Magic community. With an inventory that includes over 100 Black Lotuses, Bock is also an ongoing symbol of faith in the game we all love.

The high end chops run pretty deep over at PowerNine.

In this far reaching three-hour interview, Dan and I dive into his earliest days in the hobby, the history of MTGFinance, the formative moments in the evolution of his business activities, the state of high end Magic sales, the future of Magic digital and more.

CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.

11 thoughts on “MTG Fast Finance Podcast: Bonus Interview w/ Dan Bock of PowerNine”

  1. I think Dan’s right, supporting eternal formats helps MTG in the long run. Saffron Olive said it best recently. The great part about all these formats is if you get tired with one, you can always hop onto another. Even Standard players don’t want to play just Standard.

    1. The fact that Magic needs multiple formats to survive is something I agree with, but there are strong economic motivations, now that growth has largely plateaued, for WoTC to figure out how to ensure we’re all playing formats that keep us buying current card sets.

  2. I think you guys really need to talk to the ad people again-this morning I was swamped with endless redirects to a Facebook based sweepstakes when trying to visit this article. Has the problem been isolated yet?

    1. I had the same problem on my iPhone this morning and I work here. I was not impressed. I have given the ad team an earful, and am aiming to resolve imminently for mobile.

    1. Lol. Yeah, a few compromises on sound quality were necessary to make sure Dan could squeeze this in.

  4. Cool interview to listen to. Although i feel the topics seem to jump around abit. Might be better if it had been segmented properly and maybe split into 2 parts.
    I know danbock’s been around for really long and have personally bought from him on ebay a few times. Would be interesting to listen to future interviews from similar online sellers/stores

  5. When you two were conversing about the future prospects of P9 and/or high end cards in general, I couldn’t help but think about the threat of the counterfeit cards that are always improving. In 10 years I would expect them to be virtually indistinguishable. I would be very interested in hearing both Dan’s and yours input on the matter and if you view that as a legitimate or imminent threat.

    1. it is ABSOLUTELY both a legitimate and imminent threat. But there are a few things to think about.

      Assume that it is possible to make counterfeit cards that are indistinguishable from real cards. How would you ever know it happened. For all you know, it happened three years ago. Or ten years ago. If they’re truly perfect counterfeits, once it happens we’ll never know. So then the question becomes “How will we know?” Well. If YOU were a counterfeiter, what would you do? There are essentially two ways to play it. One is to be pretty blatant about it, and essentially flood the market with fakes, selling them as real cards as quickly and for as much as possible before the entire market fails. The other way is to play it slow. Sell them slowly through a bunch of different venues, just bleeding the market for every penny it has over years before people realize that the supply is just way too high. Preferably you’d have an agent working for you, for whom it was totally conceivable that he’d have access to hundreds of these things, and people would be ready and willing to believe that he was selling legitimate versions of the cards.

      I’ve cross posted this over on my facebook page, please feel free to hit me up there with any other questions:

      https://www.facebook.com/TheDanBock/posts/10158415611685604

  6. Really enjoyed the interview, but when Dean began to explain his “good and bad” view on the Reserved List, James jumped in with an extended an extended rant of his own opinion. Dan never got to state his opinion and that was something I am very interested in given his position as a heavy Reserved List owner, but also vendor who makes the most by flipping cardboard as quickly and as high as possible.

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