How GameStop went from struggling retailer to eBay bidder

New Economic Realities // May 11, 2026 How GameStop went from struggling retailer to eBay bidder By Mitchell Parton Ivy Liu Earlier this month, GameStop offered to buy eBay for about $55. 5 billion.

GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen, who previously led pet marketplace Chewy, told The Wall Street Journal that GameStop had built a roughly 5% stake in eBay and had a commitment of up to $20 billion in financing from TD Bank. If eBay isn’t receptive, Cohen said he was prepared for a proxy fight, according to the outlet.

“I’m thinking about turning eBay into something worth hundreds of billions of dollars,” Cohen told the Journal. “It could be a legit competitor to Amazon.” It’s still unclear how exactly GameStop, at a fraction of eBay’s size, would secure all the money needed for the transaction.

GameStop representatives did not respond to a request for comment for this story. The bold move from Cohen exemplifies how, over the past six years, GameStop has repositioned the company from one struggling with lower physical video game software and hardware sales to one with far bigger ambitions, arguably beyond its scope.

GameStop’s annual net sales had fallen 21% from 2018 to 2019, and the company reported a net loss of of $464. 4 million in fiscal 2019. Cohen joined the board of GameStop and became chairman in 2020, about a year before the company became known as a “meme stock,” attracting the attention of casual investors on Reddit.

The GameStop investing craze was possibly at least in part a result of Cohen’s erratic behavior on Twitter, where he would entice people by, for example, posting an image of an ice cream cone with the caption being solely a frog emoji. Cohen became GameStop’s CEO in 2023 and proved he was bigger than just talk.

He managed to cut costs, improve profitability and grow its collectibles business, despite sagging sales, according to CNBC. Under Cohen’s tenure, the company grew its gross margin by 7 percentage points and its net income to $77.

1 million, CNBC reported, adding that it posted two consecutive years of net income growth in 2024 and 2025 after five straight years of losses. GameStop has also amassed more than $9 billion in cash, which it hopes to use to help fund the eBay deal.

Building a niche in collectibles The proposed eBay deal comes after Cohen has turned GameStop into much more of a collectibles powerhouse, a commonality between the two companies. From fiscal 2019 to 2025, its collectibles business grew from $737. 5 million in net sales to just under $1. 1 billion.

It’s now almost a third of GameStop’s business, up from just 11% in 2019. People who grew up with Pokémon cards, baseball cards or action figures in the ‘80s and ‘90s now have adult money and are getting back into buying those things, plus younger people are interested in anime and trading card games like Magic: The Gathering.

The eBay proposal shows “these companies are looking at this space and taking it seriously,” said Jeremy Allen, chief collectible officer at Oh Yaas, a startup that manufactures trading cards that can be scanned to unlock digital content.

“You see these big companies and these big investors looking at the different businesses around collectibles and trying to figure out which ones are stable ones for them to invest in and buy in,” Allen said, noting that collectibles events company Collect-a-Con was acquired this year for an undisclosed price.

GameStop is also known to carry higher-ticket items that wouldn’t sell at big-box retailers, such as boxes of trading cards that can sell for hundreds if not thousands, Allen said. GameStop additionally hosts in-store events and tournaments for trading card games such as Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering.

Cohen imagines the eBay deal boosting GameStop’s efforts in the space. He told The Wall Street Journal that GameStop stores could serve as collection and authentication points for items from eBay sellers.

Allen said this would be a good way for eBay to reduce fake or counterfeit items on its marketplace as well as bring more people into GameStop to buy over-the-counter items or participate in tournaments. “Trust and transparency is the most important thing here,” Allen said.

Frustrations toward eBay The eBay deal would give Cohen the opportunity to regain sellers’ trust in eBay after they may have lost confidence in the platform.

“If the GameStop team is serious and they are able to acquire it, and then they are able to make a bunch of changes to eBay to make it a legit competitor for Amazon, then, yes, that would be fantastic,” said Owen Carr, chief merchandising officer for e-commerce accelerator Spreetail. The company has been selling on eBay since 2006.

“There are just not the eyeballs [on eBay] that we have on other channels, such as Amazon, Target, Walmart and even Home Depot