Wouldn't verification for almost anything beyond the extremely basic need specialized people? I don't think it's reasonable to train every Gamestop employee to be able to verify everything from fancy Swiss watches to brand name clothing to playing cards. At least if you do it in a central location you can have actual experts do the verification.

My understanding is that existing Ebay shareholders would get half cash and half stock. In order to actually profit, those shareholders would need to believe that the combined company's stock could be sold off without taking a significant loss.

If this deal does eventually go through, then it might be a good time for someone to start working on a competitor to take over the online auction space.

> Pawn shop for nerds/the middle class.

That's kind of but not really what GameStop was before digital games took over and isn't what eBay is. A majority of Pawn Shop business is in the name pawns and neither eBay nor GameStop have ever done.

> They could build AI to help authentication and just identifying sellers would help tremendously with fraud.

That's a huge step beyond reasonable, there have been billions spent on the current AIs and none of them are up to the task of telling a good fake from a real item. Maybe one day but that's ages away.

And fraud doesn't just happen on the seller side, a big headache for sellers is buyer fraud where they'll claim the item is wrong/broken and there's almost no recourse for sellers to prove that's incorrect. eBay could just as easily partner with UPS stores to implement seller and buyer authentication anyways there's not a huge benefit to GameStop in particular being the partner there. It's always been an option and they haven't taken it.

Sears and Kmart both did so much diversification in the ~1980s! Discover, Allstate insurance, Dean Witter, Coldwell Banker for Sears (and Kmart had bought Borders, Builders Square, PACE, OfficeMax). If you trace the total return to a holder of Sears stock c. 1980, including the value they would have received in terms of stock in the spinoffs, the shareholders themselves may have actually ended up doing quite well in our timeline, even compared to one where Sears had reinvested all their profits into Sears, Roebuck & Co and maintained a more dominant retailing business as a result. It seems like no one really cared if the core business succeeded or failed, though.

Dunno how gamestop’s logistics works but they could leverage the existing shops as dropoff points for sellers and offer a pickup point option to bypass the postal system. eBay sellers are at a disadvantage vs Amazon warehouse sellers when it comes to shipping costs.

At least my shipping broker in Canada uses small retail stores as dropoff points and then has a network of gig courier delivery companies they send stuff to for last mile delivery. Saves a lot on shipping costs.

I’ve noticed they don’t really integrate with gig couriers for last mile US shipments, just a few consolidators for mid-mile (eg: UPS Mail Innovations that uses USPS for last mile)

Might further delay delivery times but I use eBay to save some dollars in exchange for delayed gratification.

I don’t know about everybody else but I both sell and buy on eBay items that are more niche but not totally bespoke like on Etsy (e.g. photography equipment or specific hats).

Which means an eBay store would never make sense for my type of buyer or seller because I would just go to one of the many other existing entrenched retailers for regular things.

I know eBay pushes hard for regular retail but ultimately I see it as a marketplace for less fungible items and that’s what it excels at. Regular retail for regular items is easier because the user experience is always standard.

GameStop is trying to sit in the middle and trying to move product that is a little more fungible (previously used games and now more trading cards and collectibles) but I just don’t know how big of a market it is when you have to factor brick and mortar upkeep. I don’t want them to take down eBay in an experiment.

>I am unsure how a Gamestop/eBay storefront would do. Physical manifestations of "eBay stores" have existed in the past and none of them did very well long term.

A key here I think is the easy gradual transition here because Gamestop already has the used games business they could slowly integrate that into listing used games on eBay that were received at stores and then add related categories step by step with collectables and consumer electronics. There'd also be options of ebay items delivered to store which increases store traffic and doesn't involve giving strangers on the internet your home address, and there might be opportunities there to enter logistics and lower delivery costs for people.

Everybody understands the proposal. They also understand that an offer of $20 billion loan + $7.5b cash in hand + stock in Gamestop valued by the market at $11b = $37.5b, which is < $55b, a discrepancy Cohen has not been able to account for. Ebay also understands that leveraged buy-outs are a death sentence, and that saddling its operations with $20b of debt in exchange for gaining a dead business like Gamestop would eventually kill it.

The $20B letter from TB is the leveraged part of the buy out and the math still doesn't add up even if you for some reason allow GME to dispose of all their cash in the deal without taking a hit to their stock price.

Ha yes of course, but th EU still have to show they can get the loan. They were unable to show that.

What U.S. tax code provision allows an individual to write off (non-primary-mortgage) loan interest?

They have to trot it out because otherwise there's not much else to pimp about Cohen as CEO and this attempted deal seems much more oriented to juice the total market value of GME to more easily meet the criteria for his recent pay package rather than a great idea for either company on it's own.

I'm not sure that the incentives actually are aligned. It seems like the incentives are to think short term and do sketchy shit to pump the stock.

While successfully running a business in a sustainable way may not be the peak of ambition, calling it low ambition is toxic in the other direction.

Doing a good job without it benefiting your personally.

"Running a business well" is now "low ambitions"?

unironically, yes. go get good at tetris if you need a high score for personal validation.