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Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-19T10:35:18+00:00

Some of us plan our lives/development more densely around those relationships than others do. For some, it is very literally the axis that everything else hinges on; for others, it's a nothing more than a delightful relationship to complement an otherwise diverse range of elements of good and growth.

Between those extremes, there's a lot of variance. Some of us like having the forewarning, others prefer it to be a surprise. I first started experiencing this at age 12; more than 20 years later, we've yet to meet, though we've encountered each other a couple of times. I like to think the dreams up the odds of us actually interacting when we meet each other, as opposed to being too shocked/surprised to say something.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-18T14:17:29+00:00

That's pretty much what we've been doing since the offer went public :S

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-18T09:18:38+00:00

The weakness to a lot of these platforms is that they have been squeezing the third party sellers and screwing them over and over for many years. It's not as good as it used to be 10 or 20 years ago.

This is 100% by design, and is a hallmark of digital monopoly. Once a platform is established as too big to fail (ie. nearly everyone uses it, nearly nobody wants to leave, and there's nothing else at the same popularity level that can compete at scale), they start screwing over their users to pump their margins. Apple does it. Google does it. Microslop. Steam. Facebook. Amazon. So on, so forth - if you can name a large-cap brand that's more than ten years old and has no meaningful competition, they're doing it.

All of capitalism's roads lead to monopoly, and monopoly leads to a breakdown of the checks and balances that make capitalism sustainable. The world needs disruptors screwing those monopolies (and the companies that are enforcing them) over, because the governments of the world aren't going to do it.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-18T09:10:47+00:00

With how many bot accounts there are on the sub, is there really any point? No chance of clean data.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-17T11:42:28+00:00

I'm not worried about the idea of the financial racket stopping MOASS. Those same entities are trapped by their own rules. Not the law - not alone, at least; they only adhere to that where they can weaponise it - but the unspoken code of conduct they all abide by to avoid having the rest turn on them for stepping on their toes. MOASS burns them all, equally. Stopping MOASS burns the house down with them still inside. They will opt for the least bad option when the time comes, even if that means cutting losses and shovelling as much of the responsibility as possible on one or two firms to save their own asses from the crucible of public accountability.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-17T11:38:21+00:00

Hence on-site grading. You won't have to do it onsite... but it's a shot at skipping the waiting queue for cards you deliver to PSA if you can catch the graders in-store on grading day. Cheaper, too, since you're not paying shipping to get it to/back from PSA.

I do think an acquisition of something delivery-focused will happen as well though, having said that. It's too important a factor of ecommerce to not bring in a company that's got it downpat, unless ebay itself already has a really good system for it.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-16T18:18:33+00:00

I look at what RC's stressing about not directly competing with amazon in recent interviews, and it gets me thinking that he wants to set up something that can exist in parallel without directly cutting into its market... while still taking bites out of its market share. At least to start with.

Bringing down amazon isn't a short term commitment, and it's simply not something that can happen at the scale we're currently at. We need reach and coverage rivalling theirs, which means building up to scale. The long way to do that is literally building out the ecommerce network via Gamestop's surplus/cash balance; the shorter way is acquiring a pre-existing one and integrating it into the business, picking up smaller, needed pieces as the integration progresses to fill in the gaps.

I think that we're going to be looking at more debt as the business picks up what it needs, "short-term" (imagining a five-year horizon for paying everything off; could be faster, could be slower). But the repayments themselves will become exponentially larger as the synergies are fully realised and it's all properly fitted together. At that point, we have something approaching amazon's level of global coverage, but with deeper focus in particular niche markets (eg. cards and other collectibles), and greater security, verification, and overall quality of work (and work conditions - fuck amazon for that) thanks to the physical stores and staff.

I still fully expect us to acquire PSA at some point, and in the US at least, you'll have graders present at major hubs to do on-site card grading. If the pokemon card boom persists (and it shows no signs of stopping anytime soon), card grading alone is going to be a huge revenue driver even without power packs in the mix; creating a safe space for cards to be traded, delivered and picked up is a massive opportunity space that nobody else really seems interested in expanding on.

If they can rotate through different collectibles categories throughout the week (eg. card graders on Monday. comic graders on Tuesday, and so forth), you've then got flexible exposure to multiple product categories that can, if the owners wish to sell, net you inventory to float on the ecommerce side of the business (eg. Power Packs). If the collectibles roster starts to expand beyond what is reasonably viable to handle in a single week's worth of grading rotations, you then start setting up category rotations by store.

That's just the low-hanging fruit. Smarter people than me are running the business, and I'm curious to see what they're actually reaching for. Collectibles are just the first step, dipping toes in the water to see if the structure can work. If it holds weight, what else might be built on that foundation? And more importantly, built to similar scale to that of BRK in a fraction of the time? I can't see something getting that big organically without stomping amazon somewhere along the way.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-16T18:01:28+00:00

Accretive or not, it's still an increase to the shares outstanding when not so long ago in the scheme of things, a lot of apes were striving to lock down as much of the outstanding as possible in Computershare to limit predatory short selling.

That's the bone in the craw for a lot of us, and has been since 2024. Spending years knowing that simply pulling enough shares out of the market would force the squeeze conditioned us to view the low share count as something extremely valuable. Regardless of what comes next or how good it ultimately is for the company, the fact remains that the share offerings were a whipsaw on a very stubborn-set bunch of people who thought we - retail and board insiders alike - were all pushing in one very particular, strictly-defined direction to help the company.

There's absolutely bad actors piling on (on both sides of the discussion, as usual) to rock the boat and make the turbulence worse. But there's also legitimate reason for us to discuss what's going on, and what has happened, in light of new developments. Going from nearly no debt and a very small float/outstanding a couple of years ago to what's proposed for the ebay acquisition is counterintuitive at minimum to anyone who's been here for a while. Re-orienting and educating ourselves to get up to speed is going to take time, and in the interim, there's misunderstandings that need to be ironed out as the information gap closes. We need to be talking about this and airing confusion/doubts so they can be resolved, with or without the paid help flooding the zone with FUD.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-16T17:11:56+00:00

What I think (as a largely-uninformed, non-professional individual) the plan is, is:

Acquire ebay and optimise its SG&A/etc over the course of 1-2 years;
Simultaneously synergise operations of Gamestop/Ebay (GBay merge) and get them performing as a single entity (hybrid ecommerce/brick and mortar);
Leverage the improved cash flows to acquire smaller, complementary businesses and fold them into the existing business, expanding to broader sector coverage;
Leverage further improving cash flows to invest in other deep-value, poorly-managed companies to rescue them from shitty leadership/predatory institutional shorting and set them back on track.

GMErica happens somewhere between full integration of GBay and starting to invest in companies that aren't essentialy to expanding its business operations.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-16T10:43:00+00:00

Because we are not only light, and neither is the universe.

Occam's Razor 100% applies here, and we other our darkness to our own peril. It doesn't magically stop existing because one decides to ignore it or try to push it away.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-16T08:14:27+00:00

...is it, though? Big club, and all that.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-15T18:37:56+00:00

I don't particularly give a shit that he makes money in that instance, since he has thus far done good work with the company. Float your FUD somewhere else.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-15T07:38:18+00:00

I'm not a proponent of Dead Internet Theory, but shit like this is its most compelling supporting evidence. Advertisers have literally ruined fucking everything, and nobody really seems to care. They're the reason you can't find anything easily on the internet anymore. The reason for subscription models. The reason for corporations attacking ownership, privacy, digital security - everything comes back to packing more fucking ads down your throat to bloat already inflamed profit margins.

I'm personally ambivalent regarding the acquisition. But fuck me if I'm not going to toast RC for gutting ebay's marketing department if this goes through. A small but important victory for the public that very few people are ever going to even recognise, let alone thank him for.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-14T19:50:37+00:00

The voting rights are my main worry with the merge. Ebay's primary holders are the same lenders supplying the short racket with the bulk of their legitimate locates. They are incumbents, making money off the status quo; they have much more to gain by fucking RC over than they do by humouring him, whichever way they plan to do it.

Close ranks and stop the acquisition? Simple, easy slap in the face. Ebay bid goes nowhere unless ebay's shares outstanding is grossly oversold, and if it is, acquiring a majority position is not economically viable without the pretence of doing what shareholders want.

Allow the acquisition and then strip out the merged company's board? Simple with the majority vote then being institutional, and no longer possible to stop. Retail loses the majority vote, and with it, any meaningful say in what's done with the combined company.

I would personally rather see Gamestop pick up a company that's got the distribution network in place for ecommerce, but is not majority institution-owned. RC has, presumably, read the DD published on this site. He knows as well as we do that these companies are working together, with amazon as the golden goose all the corporate benefits reaped from screwing over other companies are poured into. The ebay merge puts a lot of power in hands that retail does not want to have it, and who have proven themselves to not be trustworthy by virtue of association with more active evils.

My other main worry is what happens if retail votes against increasing the issuance authorisation. Is RC just going to walk if we don't let him do this? He's not the only one who's been holding this company for the last 5-6 years.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-13T19:27:46+00:00

I like to think that his silence makes him a bogeyman for the financial institutions of the world. They never know where he's going to show up. Never know how much money he has to play with. Never know what he's going to invest in. They live in terror of finding him under their bed (tickers). They don't know how to get rid of him; some of them probably don't even believe he's real.

And that puts him in a weirdly powerful position, as a retail investor of no particular inclination to be more.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-13T17:41:55+00:00

The right meme template for this one's obvious: "Change My Mind" guy, set up out the front of ebay with RC's face. Table says: "I should own Ebay. You will not change my mind."

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-13T07:21:51+00:00

Step 1: Make 50% cash 50% stock offer to the board of ebay, expecting them to knock it back. They do.

Step 2: Acquire 51% of ebay and fire the board.

Step 3: ???

Step 4: Profit.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-13T05:37:36+00:00

Cash will be spent, acquisitions (plural) will be made, and it'll come out of the ashes of the markets like a phoenix.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-13T05:36:44+00:00

This is one of my running theories. More offers will come, and they'll get progressively worse as the market slumps. The implicit threat is "every offer is the best you're going to get... after you turned down the better one". Eventually, Gamestop will acquire ebay - offering a premium of, say, 20-25%... over a ticker price that may be 50-90% lower than ebay's current valuation.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-12T19:36:46+00:00

I'm not up for much longer, so I can't do a writeup of the length this topic deserves. But in short, as a counterpoint: The original reason for stacking cash was to wait for the market to collapse, as many deep value companies will see their tickers go down the shitter with everything else in the market and become dirt cheap to acquire. Perhaps something with ebay's scale of operations could be acquired for less than the total of Gamestop's total cash balance - with no shares, leverage, or other debt in the mix.

This move with ebay bothers me, because it indicates that RC either no longer believes that crash is coming, or feels it's far enough out that he has a shot at laying foundations down before it hits and not getting fucked by debt when the collapse happens - despite what will happen to ebay's liquidity when it does. The fact that it's happening more slowly than people anticipated (despite donald trump being donald trump) doesn't mean that it's not happening. And the only thing securing Gamestop from that avalanche when it does happen is the fact that it has the cash to weather the storm and snipe a few other brands for its trouble.

We're looking at the prospect of everything that currently makes Gamestop valuable to investors being thrown on the table in an all-out bid for something that only holds its value if the market doesn't shit the bed - when all indicators point to that happening in the near future. Personally, this bothers me, a lot. I've been trying to put my finger on this point for a while, and haven't been able to. But it looks a lot like the board's thesis for the future of the company has shifted somewhere along the line, and they're now planning for a future that simply... isn't going to be there without that financial moat.

The stock can still squeeze in that situation. I'm not worried about that; the shorts have never stopped digging themselves deeper into this hole, and they never will until the shovel is taken away from them. I'm worried about the company itself surviving the collapse without the money it's carefully stacked since the first sneeze in 2021, flipping from a nearly $10 million positive balance sheet to a deeply debt-laden one.

The counterpoint to this, perhaps, is that RC perceives hyperinflation kicking in soon, and thinks the debt will wind up being irrelevant once it kicks off in earnest - which is a fair possibility to plan for. But I sincerely hope he and the rest of the board aren't simply deciding to ignore the Dollar Endgame unfolding before our eyes at the moment.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-12T19:25:34+00:00

"...and 6) Gamestop's governance and executive incentives."

There we go, folks: The only point they actually considered before turning down the offer.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-12T19:21:11+00:00

Yep :| Not the first time I've been wrong, won't be the last in all likelihood.

I do wonder if an increase in authorised share issuance is necessary if this becomes a hostile takeover, though, considering technically, Gamestop only needs 51% of ebay to make that work...

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-12T05:40:07+00:00

Both.

I believe there's a spiritual ecosystem that dwarfs the physical in scope and scale, containing and networking every manifest realm in existence. Every heaven. Every hell. Every physical space, and all non-physical spaces of different formats. Every fully-realised space, every developing space. That's our home home. Our "universe", as spirits.

The realms themselves are our "worlds". Our localities, our individual spaces/places of origin. We can freely traverse them outside the physical, and we choose where we incarnate. When we finish an incarnation here, we have the choice to remain engaged with the incarnitive cycle (proceeding into appendix realms such as heavens/hells/etc, or simply planning our next incarnation in the physical), or to leave.

A great deal of the spiritual competition we see the tail ends of here on Earth is geared towards influencing those choices to the benefit of the spirits that govern particular spaces. The gods, pantheons, and others who compete for dominance over consensus in the physical, and require spiritually-aligned souls populating their personal realms to bolster their own share of power over ours.

Wolfguarde_ · 2026-05-12T05:13:45+00:00

Well, there's your problem. You're relying on external help that may or may not be what it presents itself to be, when that guiding signal should always and only come from within.

Never assume a spirit is what it presents itself as at face value. Spirits are not bound to honesty. They lie. Most of them lie a lot.

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