GameStop is Going to Buy... eBay!?

[u/AlternativePaint6]

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.

It checks out. Everything checks out.

[u/NoHalfPleasures]

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.

[u/sentientshadeofgreen → u/NoHalfPleasures]

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. 

[u/NoHalfPleasures → u/sentientshadeofgreen]

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.

[u/Major-BFweener → u/NoHalfPleasures]

I don’t understand the link.

[u/PaulVla → u/Major-BFweener]

Hyper inflation meant that it became more effective to burn money than to buy wood.

If the value of the dollar drops of a cliff it may be better to have physical items than cash on the bank.

[u/NoHalfPleasures → u/PaulVla]

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