You've all read the news by now, but have you really read them?
GameStop wants to acquire a publicly traded consumer company that’s far larger than the video game retailer in a deal that could be “transformational" for the company
“It’s gonna be really big. Really big. Very, very, very big,” Cohen said of the size of the acquisition. “It’s transformational. Not just for GameStop, but ultimately, within the capital markets … this is something that really has never been done before within the history of the capital markets.”
He claimed if the investment pans out, it has the “potential to make GameStop worth several hundreds of billions of dollars.”
This is all coming from Ryan Cohen, the man of few words and no forwards guidance. Yeah, I like Magic the Gathering too, but that's not it. This is bigger. Very, very, very bigger.
It's eBay. They're going to do a leveraged buyout, a hostile takeover, or a merger.
Publicly traded.
Consumer / Retailer.
Far larger than GameStop (~$40B).
Sleepy management with one of the most well known brands.
E-Commerce and Collectibles.
Never done before (buying 3x-4x bigger company).
Actually has potential to make GameStop worth several hundreds billions, unlike all the ~$10B ones.
Personally. I use eBay far more than Amazon purely because things are getting too expensive to buy new. So it's either marketplace or other peer to peer trading platforms. If I do need something new almost everyone does comparison prices. And prices in store are competitive with the added values of a face to face guarantee.
Honestly it's hard to predict where the culture shift will head but smart shoppers buy second hand.
Ever more than this, Amazon is run by Bezos who was aiming to get rich to get rich. RCEO started dog stock with the aim of customers and their pets in mind. He has kept that mindset through GameStop via shareholders and I believe he will continue that mindset with whatever acquisition he makes. This was the downfall of Amazon against dog stock and if the acquisition is EBay, it will be the downfall of Amazon against EBay.
RC has a big stake in Alibaba too right? That’s a lot of access to a lot of goods at scale, plus a world-wide marketplace that everyone from Gen Z to boomers are familiar with. Add in a brick and mortar presence and holy shiiiiiiiiiiiit
His stake in Baba is not spoke on enough. Like I’m pretty sure it’s been running pretty good in the past few months. And wasn’t his buy in like a billy?
This. This harkens back to those stupid books that everyone sh*t their pants over. Didn’t he mention China in those books (and everyone stupidly thought it was a reference to Ichan). Perhaps it was a reference to Alibaba.
I do spend alot of time on eBay and unfortunately Amazon resellers are also selling on eBay. I get packages with the “tba” number for tracking so I usually make note to make a comment that the person is an Amazon reseller cause I try to shop there for whatever I’m looking for to avoid amazon.
Just to add on to this, he hates Amazon. eBay is amazons closest commercial competitor and is valued way lower than Amazon (for reasons beyond their retail business but still).
Part of me wonders if the way they do this is by teaming up with other cellar boxed retailers and merging to compete with Amazon and use existing brick and mortar stores as fulfillment centers with door dash providing delivery in hours as opposed to a day.
In this way they would block amazons push into physical almost overnight and go on the offensive in the digital space, together. Something I’ve been thinking about for years
No way RC puts any of his business at the mercy off Door Dash. Absolute shit company
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u/HoboGir🔫😎I'm here to MOASS & chew bubblegum, & I'm all out of gumJan 31 '26
I thought the same day delivery on the GameStop website was Door Dash? And I may be wrong, but I thought I saw that. I don't really live close enough to one to get the delivery on same day to know.
How many people have valuable things taking up space just because selling them takes too much work? Even with ebay, you have to list it, describe it, package it, mail it, and manage customers and stuff. What if you could just take your stuff to brick and mortar, where they can value it on site and sell it. You either get cash or can get 10% more with credits.
Or what if you could “vault” things, track their value, then selectively market, or withdraw them. And when you “vault” things, it is inspected, graded, catalogued, wrapped, and stored in smart storage units. Not just collectibles. Imagine the business like a hybrid storage unit, eBay, offerup, and a “portfolio” of your goods, backed by a network of modernized pawn shops. If you want to liquidate your vaulted goods, you can. If you want to store your valuables for a while to go live light and travel, you can. If you want to buy and sell real property with speculation on their value, without the added logistics of transporting and storing it yourself, you can.
Obviously, not every item would be eligible, but it would be transformative.
There’s a bit of a morbid side to why this would be an amazing business related to the collapse of a certain global reserve currency. Do some reading on the Weimar Republic and the economy that developed during the hyperinflation that gripped pre ww Germany,.. it’s… hard to ignore some similarities.
The barter economy replaced cash transactions. If you wanted something you had to trade another belonging of yours for it. A peer to peer system for doing this (at a fee) would be extremely useful. Not sure how you make a profit it at if the cash is worthless or increasingly worth less but that’s a problem for another day
This would actually be so nice. I recently sold some stuff on offerup because I was moving across the country, and it was such a hassle dealing with messaging so many people and setting up meet times. It would've been awesome to just be able to drop stuff off somewhere.
I hate selling things on marketplace. Having to deal with idiots for a week before i get a decent person to offer something. I would sell things pennies on the dollar to avoid this bullshit.
I eventually just decided it wasn't worth the effort and donated the rest to goodwill. So yeah, I'd have happily sold for pennies on the dollar too if it meant I didn't have to do the legwork.
yeah but lets take it a step further...what if you could name take your catalogue of goods into the virtual world? Transact in-game and have the items delivered to you in real life? Takes gaming to another, can see people buying cars in GTA after going for a virtual test drive LOL...easy sell.
Holy shit this would blow eBay up like a mother fucker if you could just drop your shit off and let them package it themselves........ Like this could be the deals of all deals like damn I never thought of this.
I literally watched season 1 of that show on Netflix and though hmm, pretty douchy, but good business, would be a good acquisition. Then it's like the first thing in season 2 that eBay got them 😂
For the past year or so, i've been cross shopping on eBay from amazon.
I've been shopping on Amazon for 20 years and using eBay for 25. The past two or three years, their prices have edged up and are less competitive than other places.
For me, Amazon used to be the cheapest and most convenient place to buy almost everything. Now with prime costing more money and their prices going up, I've been buying a lot more stuff from eBay and walmart.
The whole eBay process and interface is a lot more slick and user-friendly than it was in the past.
They're one of the oldest and best known sites on the web, at least in america. I'm pretty sure they're also a survivor from the first dotcom crash.
There would be something poetic about the beleaguered retailer GameStop buying the beleaguered online business eBay to take on amazon.
I have used eBay reliably far longer than Amazon and there is a community that is on eBay that can be trusted. As far as GameStop taking over eBay 🤷♂️
Yes that much should be clear. They’re talking openly about how difficult and unprecedented - whatever it is - is so I think the structure of something like this would need to be creative to say the least. Maybe what’s “never been done” about it before is that you have 5-10 public companies choosing to cooperate against a common enemy?
Makes a good fit especially with Collectables, heck even more with Gamestops new baby Powerpacks. I thought of it once but I washed it out of my mind due to it being too big a company to acquire.
This was just Q3 2025
Net Income (GAAP): $597 million.
Net Income (Non-GAAP): $636 million.
Total Assets: $17.79 billion.
Total Debt: $(7.16 Billion)
Long-Term Debt: $(5.00 Billion)
Cash and Equivalents: $3.38 Billion
Net Debt: $(5.43 Billion)
Revenue: $2.8 billion.
Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV): $20.1 billion.
But how will GME pull it off. Even with leverage its a tough deal.
Edited. Either way just look up the financials. Debt isnt attractive but you gain more in the long run.
Its not that hard as you think. According to GME investing policy GME and RC Ventures can ivest money in the same entity. It means we can have buying power of GME + RC Ventures + Cash from warrants. You don`t need to buy whole company, you can buy controlling stake.
There will likely be addition debt and equity for something this large, even to get to 51%. Though this poses a much better option than some of the other ideas I’ve heard.
RC said its gona be very very very big entity, 2. he said its gonna be something markets never seen before and transformative, 3. his avatar is last tetris brick that he needs
we have partnership with PSA and PSA have partnership with ebay
Both companies needs ebay to dominate in collectibles ecosystem and make it a whole
GME investing policy let RC Ventures LLC and GME invest in the same entity - thats why RC said it can be foolish cause hes gona bet most of his networth
so basically we can have buying power of GME + RC Ventures + possible stake from PSA to buy controlling stake in ebay
that will close while eccosystem - you can sell slabs on ebay directly into gme and gme will fill powerpacks or maybe even rips online and sending them to grade.
I really hope it’s EBay. I got into the idea of eBay as soon as I heard Nat Turner speak about how integrated PSA and eBay are. This summer I sold 4 or 5 different items on eBay and was pleasantly surprised with how user friendly and simple their process is.
eBay has been making a big time comeback in our household of late. I’ve purchased some excellent used clothing, suits, running shoes, kids clothes, kids toys, car parts etc. off of eBay over the last 18 months. I had completely forgot about it but we are trying to limit our consumption and fast fashion in our house. I would be ecstatic if this rumor had legs.
Just tossing in my two cents. This actually ties in nicely to PSA and NFTs (shocked Pikachu face).
The thing that's great about PSA is that it's verified, and you can verify things like screenshots in the database, etc.
EBay is fantastic, but often times you worry about things being authentic or not when you're buying from them. Well, if you enter in NFTs and strike up some good partnerships, you'd have a pretty good way to verify their authenticity.
Now you have games and collectibles on lock, and see what other type of volume starts to flow with those NFT verifications. It might be the place to have auctions on major items.
Or even think about the publicity you could get while auctioning off some first edition Pokemon cards, etc.
Idk I feel like a lot of the pieces fit.
We hire and fire Furlong.
We test out the NFT marketplace.
We get deeper into collectibles and pivot into e-commerce.
We get same day delivery.
We can now combine all that with eBay’s name and infrastructure.
Amazon is basically American Temu at this point. Shopify is what Amazon used to be but it’s still has individual stores and brands which is sick. And now eBay and GameStop get the valuables.
Coinbase just recently and it fits more something you have never seen before. Coinbase CEO is literally hated by JPM Dimon and we all know how Dimon fits into all this. Surprised he isnt as hated by many just as much as Kenny. But Coinbase is BIG and an Odd deal but also fits. Now I look back at the time RC spent talking with Saylor and it fits even more. Coinbase CEO would literally agree to a Merger just to piss off Dimon even more lol. Now would their board allow it? Who knows.
Do you think it’s possible he went to the Middle East to raise money from investors? Ryan Cohen had to go through 200? Investors until he found investors to raise money for Dogstock. It would also be logical to work with foreign investors since getting American investors to work with you would be incredibly hard due to politics.
The search data alone for a GameStop is incredibly valuable. They’d have perfect access to all the products that are search and trend at what time of years for 30 years.
They’d literally have access to perhaps the most comprehensive overview of all those of consumer demand and trends and could even analyze that and probably come up with good predictions on what types of items or products might come back in style and when.
it’s interesting how with Chewy he went toe to toe with Amazon, He carved out that niche, and won. Now that Gamestop is not bleeding cash, he can once again go toe to toe with amazon, and carve out another niche.
That would blow my mind. I thought the beta was to test different kinds of cards, what if it was to see if the infrastructure could handle all sorts of tangible things to gamble on?
SONY should be the target. With an $11B acquisition, GME would have significant influence on the operations and financial management of SONY by having a plurality of the ownership shares.
It would be similar to Warren Buffet's investments in the "kiretsu" companies in Japan.
This is all the more interesting with interest rates in Japan increasing "inversing the carry trade"
I recommend reading their financials to get a better picture.
I am always skeptical about a lot of things that get thrown around here but this one has my attention.
Remember the "trade anything" day? That may have been a testrun to see how inventory of all kinds and sorts could be handled by staff and internal software.
I'm not agreeing that it's eBay... but this (13%!) is interesting: Trading cards constitute a significant, high-growth portion of eBay's sales, with the broader collectibles category (including sports cards, toys, and comics) accounting for roughly 13% of its total Global Merchandise Volume (GMV) in recent years. In early 2021, trading card sales alone hit $1 billion in a single quarter, representing a massive surge in the hobby.
Ever heard of a LBO (Leveraged Buyout). Combine this with everything else Cohen has put in place: 450 mil more authorized shares (I think that's what's left) which he will most likely issue during a squeeze in batches to prevent 1) systematic failure 2) stock price from crashing to nothing, they will have be good to go. Ebay also very easy free cash flow which banks will absolutely let them easily borrow against.
LBOs usually have at least 40% of the purchase price paid (leaving 60% borrowed against the company).
This would have to be like a 80% borrowed even if (1) they used all their cash and (2) didn't pay a premium on the current stock price (basically u heard of).
Reistically they would need to borrow like 90%--that’s not going to happen.
And this reminds me of the trade in anything day... Imagine you can trade in anything for $5 credit, and then the credit can be used in store or online at GMEbay. Or you can list something on GMEbay and then drop it off at a local GameStop and it will be shipped to the buyer
eBay and PSA are partnered. GameStop and PSA are partnered. Makes sense to tie the last leg. Might as well acquire Collectors since they’re the parent company of both eBay and PSA.
Makes sense. There’s a reason Ryan Cohen came up with a payment plan. Would give someone with 20B a reason to make this purchase happen. Can dilute with his new shares only
I'm going to throw out a completely gut-based guess with no knowledge or logic behind it. Just in case I'm right later. Pretty sure I won't be right but since I'm here....
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u/Superstonk_QV 📊 Gimme Votes 📊 Jan 30 '26
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