Complete guide
How Dans MTG works
Everything you need to know — from installation to identifying your first card and managing your collection.
What is Dans MTG?
Dans MTG is a Chrome browser extension designed for Magic: The Gathering players who buy and sell cards through Facebook groups and auction pages.
When you're browsing a Facebook post and see a card photo, right-clicking it instantly identifies the card and pulls up live pricing from more than a dozen stores across Australia, New Zealand, the US and Europe — all without leaving Facebook. No searching, no typing the card name, no switching tabs.
It also connects to your personal card collection, so you'll know immediately whether you already own that card or a similar version of it before you decide to bid.
Installing the extension
Testers only. Dans MTG is in closed beta and isn't on the public Chrome Web Store yet. To get access, request an invite from Dan at
support@dansmtg.com. He'll send you the install link and details.
- Open the Chrome Web Store and search for Dans MTG, or follow the direct install link on the home page.
- Click Add to Chrome and confirm when prompted.
- A small icon appears in your browser toolbar. Click it to open the extension popup.
- On first run, you'll be asked for the API URL — enter it and click Save. This is provided by the service administrator.
- Click Sign Up, enter your email and a password (min 8 characters, 1 uppercase, 1 number), then verify your email with the code sent to your inbox.
- You receive 150 free credits automatically the moment your account is confirmed.
Dans MTG requires a backend API to be deployed on AWS. If you're setting it up for a group, see the deployment guide in the project repository.
Identifying a card
- Go to any Facebook group or page that sells Magic cards.
- Find a post with a card photo.
- Right-click directly on the card image.
- In the context menu, select Identify MTG Card.
- A dark overlay panel appears showing:
- Card name, set code, and collector number
- Foil or non-foil (detected from the ★ symbol in the card's bottom-left stamp)
- Frame treatment (normal, extended art, borderless, showcase, etc.)
- Type line, power/toughness, and artist
- Live prices from more than a dozen stores
- How many copies you own of this version, and how many other versions you hold
Scanning only happens when you explicitly choose the context menu option. Dans MTG never automatically monitors your browsing, uploads images in the background, or scans posts you haven't asked it to.
Look up a card by name (no photo)
Don't have a clear photo, or just want to price a card you already know? Open the Card tab and start typing the card's name — a type-ahead list suggests matching cards as you go. Pick one and you get the same full details and live pricing as a photo scan, without running the AI. Because there's no AI cost, a manual lookup is only 5 credits (versus 30 for an image scan), and — just like a scan — the next few people who view that same card refund you 1 credit each, down to a 1-credit net cost.
Reading the scan result
Card details
Shows the card name with foil/non-foil and frame treatment badges, the set and collector number, type line, power/toughness (for creatures), loyalty (for planeswalkers), and artist credit.
Your collection
Shows whether you own this specific version (e.g., foil extended art) and how many copies, plus a total count of other versions of the same card name you hold. You can add, update, or remove cards directly from this panel without leaving Facebook.
Live pricing
Prices are fetched in real time from official card databases and a growing list of retail stores, then cached for 6 hours so repeat lookups are instant. Each price is shown with a direct buy-link back to the store's own product or search page, so the retailer always gets the referral.
Want another store added to the pricing list? Email Dan at
support@dansmtg.com with the store and it can be considered for a future update.
Where prices come from
There are far more than six sources now — over a dozen storefronts plus three official data APIs, spanning several regions and currencies:
| Source | Region | How it's read |
|---|
| Scryfall (USD + TCGPlayer) | US | Official API |
| Mana Pool | US | Official API |
| CardTrader | EU | Official API |
| Card Kingdom | US | Public product page |
| Star City Games | US | Search link only |
| Good Games | AU | Public store JSON |
| Steel City | AU | Public store JSON |
| MTGMate | AU | Public product page |
| The Card Hub | AU | Public store JSON |
| Pro Gamers | AU | Public store JSON |
| MTG Singles | AU | Public store JSON |
| Jenes MTG | AU | Public store JSON |
| GUF | AU | Public store JSON |
| TCG Singles | AU | Public store JSON |
| Kastle | AU | Public store JSON |
| Plenty of Games | AU | Public store JSON |
| General Games | AU | Public store JSON |
| Card Merchant | NZ | Public store JSON |
Overseas prices (USD, EUR, NZD) are converted to a common currency so you can compare them at a glance. Not every store carries every printing — a source that doesn't stock the exact card is simply left out of the results for that scan.
How the exact card is looked up
The hard part of pricing isn't finding a price — it's finding the price for the exact printing you're looking at. A card name like "Lightning Bolt" can have dozens of printings across sets, frames and finishes, each worth wildly different amounts. Dans MTG anchors every lookup to a single, unambiguous identity:
- When your card is identified, it's resolved to its Scryfall printing — a specific set code, collector number and unique Scryfall ID (e.g. the borderless foil #299, not the plain #38).
- Official APIs (Scryfall, Mana Pool, CardTrader) are queried directly by that Scryfall ID, so the match is exact by construction — Mana Pool takes the ID as-is, CardTrader maps it to its internal blueprint.
- Store lookups search each shop's public catalogue by card name, then score the candidates against the resolved set name, frame treatment and collector number to pick the right listing — and reject a result that carries the wrong collector number rather than guess.
- Foil, frame and special finishes (borderless, extended art, showcase, etched, rainbow/halo/surge foil, serialised) are all part of the match, so a foil borderless scan won't be priced against the cheap non-foil normal printing.
Every buy-link points to the exact printing where the store exposes it, or to a plain card-name search where it doesn't — never to a wrong-numbered product page.
Playing fair — robots.txt & store terms
Dans MTG is a price-comparison and referral tool, and it's built to respect what each store actually permits. Before a store is added, its robots.txt, terms and any published agent policy are checked, and the way we read it is chosen to stay inside those rules:
- Official APIs first. Where a sanctioned data source exists — Scryfall, Mana Pool and CardTrader all publish public APIs designed for exactly this — we use it instead of scraping a web page.
- Only allowed paths are read. The participating stores publish an
agents.md that explicitly permits read-only, non-transacting access to their public product and search endpoints — the only endpoints Dans MTG touches. We never place carts, checkouts or orders.
- Disallowed endpoints are respected. Where a store's
robots.txt blocks the search paths we'd otherwise use — Star City Games is the clearest case — we don't scrape it at all. It's shown as a plain search link so you can still price-check it, without us fetching anything the store has asked crawlers not to.
- Rate-limited and cached. Prices are cached for 6 hours and requests are gentle and infrequent, honouring each site's crawl-delay so we never hammer a store's servers.
- We store facts, not content. Only the price and the card's identifiers are kept — never a store's descriptions, images or page layout — and every result links back to the source.
- Never behind a login, never defeating protections. Dans MTG only reads public pages and never attempts to bypass logins, CAPTCHAs or anti-bot measures.
In short: buy-links are welcome everywhere (stores want the referral), and the more sensitive act of reading prices is done through official APIs or explicitly-permitted public endpoints — and skipped entirely on any store that asks not to be crawled.
Managing your collection
Import from ManaBox
- In ManaBox, go to your Collection → tap the menu (⋮) → Export → CSV.
- Open the Dans MTG popup → Settings tab → Import Collection.
- Paste the CSV text and click Import. Your entire collection syncs in seconds.
Add cards manually
From any scan result overlay, use the + Add to My Collection button to record a card with your chosen quantity and condition. Update or remove cards from the same panel.
Browse your collection
Open the popup and the My Collection tab shows all your cards with a live search box. Tap ✕ next to any card to remove it.
Understanding credits
Running AI-powered card identification costs money (cloud computing and AI inference fees). Dans MTG uses a community credit system so the cost is shared fairly and the service stays funded — every scan or view contributes a little, so nobody rides entirely for free on the people who pay.
How you earn and spend credits
- +150 credits free when you first sign up.
- −30 credits when you are the first person to scan a new Facebook post URL (this runs the AI).
- −5 credits when you look a card up yourself by typing its name (the type-ahead search) instead of scanning a photo — no AI needed, so it's much cheaper than a scan. Others repay you the same way: you're refunded 1 credit for each of the next 4 people who view that card, leaving the same 1-credit net cost everyone pays.
- −1 credit the first time you view a post someone else already scanned. A view is never free — and the first few viewers of a freshly-scanned post pay a bit more (15, then 7, then 3) to repay the scanner quickly, then are refunded back down to 1 as more people view. Re-opening a post you've already viewed costs nothing.
- +credits back as new people view a post you scanned — repaid fastest by the first few viewers — until you're left with just a 1-credit net cost. If you paid extra as one of those early viewers, you're refunded back down to 1 the same way. After that, further views go toward keeping the service running.
- +monthly credits with a subscription, or a one-off boost from a credit pack (see below).
Running out of credits
If you don't have enough credits for a scan or a view, you can subscribe or buy a credit pack from the extension for a top-up. Credits also trickle back to you whenever other people view posts you scanned earlier, so an active community keeps everyone topped up.
Subscriptions & credit packs
If you scan a lot, a monthly subscription is the cheapest way to get credits. There are four tiers — Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Mythic — each granting a recurring monthly credit allowance. Prefer to pay as you go? Buy a one-off credit pack whenever you need a boost.
Subscribe, top up, change tier, or cancel from the Settings area of the extension. Payments are processed securely by Stripe — your card details are entered on Stripe's checkout and never touch Dans MTG (see our Privacy Policy). You can manage or cancel your subscription at any time through the Stripe customer portal, linked from the extension.
Dans MTG is in early development — plans, prices, and credit amounts are subject to change.
Foil detection
Foil status is detected from the card's own printed text, not from the reflective sheen in the photo (which varies too much with lighting to be reliable). The bottom-left stamp on every Magic card contains the signal:
- SET • EN — bullet/dot = non-foil
- SET ★ EN — star = foil
Seller labels in the photo (e.g. a "FOIL" sticker) are used as secondary confirmation.
Supported frame treatments
- Normal — standard bordered frame
- Extended Art — art spills into the side borders
- Borderless — art covers the full card edge to edge
- Showcase — special stylised frame unique to the set
- Retro — old-border style frame
- Etched — foil-etched commander frame
- Serialised — printed /XXX serial number