This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/Superstonk by /u/AlternativePaint6 on 2026-05-12 20:38:22+00:00.

---

Holy shit, I can not believe the reaction of this sub to the best news we've had in years. For five years people have been blindly trusting him to do the right thing, through mistakes with NFTs and dilutions without clear goal, and now that we finally have some real action that's going to make us worth hundreds of billions we only focus on "dilution bad"? Yeah, no thanks. If this sub can find tinfoil from RK's pubic hair, we sure as hell can find more than "eBay wastes money on marketing expenses" from one of the biggest acquirements to ever be made.

See, already three months ago I predicted that GameStop would acquire eBay, but what I did was only focus on the facts that Ryan Cohen had stated publicly, while leaving out the details that lead me to look at eBay partnership before Ryan ever said a word about it.

It is my ultimate belief that Ryan Cohen is once again repeating the very strategy he told us in a 2021 shareholder meeting:

"We know some people want us to lay out a whole detailed plan today, but that's not gonna happen. You won't find us talking a big game, making a bunch of lofty promises, or telegraphing our strategy to the competition."

We know that's their strategy, so now when they put everything in line while ready to "dilute" more than ever before, we really think the new strategy is to just cut costs and state it publicly? You guys really don't think he's been cooking something much bigger all this time?

If efficiency and cutting costs was what Ryan is really after, they could just buy any similar but smaller company with much less cash and much less risk (and much less dilution). You know, the way Warren Buffett did it. But no, Ryan clearly wants eBay specifically for something great, something that no other company in the world can offer...

Where GameStop already succeeded

GameStop is Ryan's baby, I believe it to be his Berkshire Hathaway. He's talked publicly about how he likes trading cards and how gaming was close to him as a kid. A billionaire who could retire doesn't just lead a company for 5+ years (for free) and not like the company. This whole "I want eBay for eBay" is only half of the truth, he very much wants it for GameStop as well.

See, when Ryan initially bought into GME, he probably didn't known what exactly his end plan would be, he just knew that the company was being driven to the ground by a malicious board and that it was worth saving. He knew that he could turn it profitable and come up with some form of digitalization in the future, he probably just didn't know what. And this is why they tested many things like the NFT Marketplace and the GameStop Wallet, even the big warehouse thing... but those clearly didn't bear fruit.

And then they found it.

“All of a sudden we see the GameStop customer really when it comes to trading cards, there’s a strong appetite. That category has done very well and we’ve gone from 10% of our sales to close to a third for the full year is going to come from collectibles.”

• Ryan Cohen

Not only are they already seeing insane +60% YoY collectibles growth within GameStop, but collectibles market itself is expected to grow by 67% by 2033. This market is literally worth hundreds of billions, and GameStop has the ultimate tool for it: Power Packs.

For context, Valve makes around a billion dollars every year with CS2's cases, a very comparable product in a ~$5 billion market. Now imagine Power Packs when the collectibles market is expected to be half a trillion dollars. Even if GameStop only makes 10% of what Valve does with a similar product, we're already looking at $10 billion annual profit.

Where GameStop failed

So why not just scale collectibles and Power Packs? They're almost like a digital product, they can be scaled fast and they have great margins. Why risk everything for a leveraged buyout of eBay?

Well, let's see how well Power Packs are really doing.

Here's a post of Power Packs being sold out 7 months ago.

And here's a post of Power Packs being sold out just one week ago.

And here are some more quotes from the CEO himself:

"If you look at digital Power Packs, we’ve kept it pretty limited in terms of being able to get into the digital category and frankly it’s not a marketing thing, we just can’t get enough inventory — and it’s the same thing on the physical thing"

"Can't get enough inventory, at least at a price where we can — you can buy inventory at 110% or 120% market value, but we’re not going to start doing stupid stuff like that."

"The way it stands right now is we're selling the product very quickly. The more inventory we have, we can sell the product."

A growing half a trillion dollar market with great margins and a perfect product, but they simply can't get enough inventory.

The End Game

I have no doubt in my mind that Ryan won't also fix eBay's financials. If there's billions of dollars to be trimmed, he will trim them. But for a purchase of $55B, that alone is not worth the risk, he could just trim some smaller companies instead. My belief is that he's buying eBay for the collectibles inventory and marketplace specifically.

While they do have an $8B warchest that they could use to buy trading cards with, that is not a good use of their money. Like Cohen himself said, they would have to do "stupid stuff like buy inventory at 110% or 120% market value". They would also spend a ton of time and effort on simply finding the sellers in the first place, then negotiating with them for the prices, and all of this buying worth $8B would inflate the prices due to the very demand they themselves would create. All while people are still taking their cards to eBay because that's what they know and that's what they're used to.

So instead... they just buy the whole damn marketplace.

With eBay at their hands, GameStop doesn't have to go around searching for cards, rather the cards come to them. Not into GameStop, not into just any auction site, but into the biggest, most popular trading card auction site in the world.

Now I could write a full essay about the upsides of this, but let's keep it short and simple instead:

• Billions, if not tens of billions to be made annually.
• Essentially zero effort in finding the cards.
• Not inflating prices as much due to not forcefully finding buyers.
• Essentially first dibs on everything.
• Near infinite inventory due to the number of people already selling on eBay.
• PSA partnership already allows for cheaper grading.
• Keep the existing businesses and profits of both eBay and GameStop.

Remember, this is all on top of what has already been stated publicly. If Power Packs truly are as great as Cohen says, if they are even 10% of other comparable products, then eBay will be the final nail in the coffin. Ryan Cohen is going to buy ALL the cards.

As for me, I'm just buying the dip.