A company worth $10 billion offered to buy a company worth $48 billion for $56 billion. The smaller company sells used video games. The larger one is one of the internet’s oldest marketplaces. The bid lasted less than a week.

On Tuesday, eBay’s board rejected GameStop’s unsolicited acquisition proposal in language that barely attempted diplomacy. “We have concluded that your proposal is neither credible nor attractive,” board chairman Paul Pressler wrote in a public letter to GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen. The letter cited six specific concerns, including “the uncertainty regarding your financing proposal” and “GameStop’s governance and executive incentives.”

Then eBay went further. The platform permanently suspended Cohen’s personal seller account, citing activity that put “the eBay community at risk.” Cohen had listed 36 items on the site days earlier — including graded trading cards, retro games, and GameStop memorabilia priced at levels that suggested neither credibility nor attraction. A pair of used socks was listed at over $14,000. People were actually bidding before the account was shut down.

Follow the Money

Cohen’s offer valued eBay at $125 per share, split evenly between cash and GameStop stock. To fund the cash portion, GameStop secured a commitment letter from TD Securities for up to $20 billion in debt financing and said it had roughly $9 billion in cash on hand. On paper that covers the roughly $28 billion cash portion, but the TD commitment comes with significant conditions, and CNBC reported that the funding gap remains substantial. The stock portion — another $28 billion — would come from issuing GameStop shares, the very stock that trades at meme-driven multiples.

TD’s financing letter came with conditions. CNBC reported that the commitment assumes the combined company would maintain an investment-grade credit rating from at least two of the three major agencies. Moody’s Ratings had already called the proposed deal “credit negative” for eBay, citing the leverage it would require.

Wall Street analysts were blunt. Baird’s Colin Sebastian put the probability of success at “relatively low.” Michael Burry — the investor famous for shorting the housing market and formerly a GameStop bull — disclosed this week that he had sold every share. “Never confuse debt for creativity,” Burry wrote on Substack.

The Pitch

Cohen argued that the two companies shared natural overlap in trading cards, collectibles, and retro games, and proposed converting GameStop’s 1,600 US stores into authentication hubs and live-commerce studios. He also suggested eBay was overstaffed, telling the TBPN podcast: “There’s 11,500 employees. It doesn’t make sense. I could run that business from my house. It’s eBay, it looks the same as it did in 1995.”

His CNBC appearance was widely described as awkward and combative. When pressed on financing details, Cohen said: “We are offering half cash, half stock, and we have the ability to issue stock in order to get the deal done.”

That is technically true. GameStop’s shares are up over 20% this year, buoyed by the same retail-investor enthusiasm that turned the company into a meme-stock phenomenon in 2021. But issuing stock to fund an acquisition means diluting the very shareholders who drove the price up — a circular logic that eBay’s board clearly noticed.

What This Actually Means

GameStop is sitting on a real pile of cash, accumulated through strategic share offerings during the meme-stock mania. Cohen has been transparent about wanting to deploy it. The eBay bid, however unserious, signals that he’s looking far beyond video games for his next move.

For eBay, the rejection was straightforward. The company’s shares are up 24% this year under CEO Jamie Iannone, who has refocused the platform on specialty categories — trading cards, luxury resale, collectibles — that distinguish it from Amazon. eBay enabled nearly $80 billion in gross merchandise volume in 2025. It did not need to be rescued by a retailer whose primary physical footprint is mall-based stores selling pre-owned consoles.

The permanent ban of Cohen’s account was the punctuation mark. eBay didn’t just reject the offer. It showed him the door.

Sources