GameStop-eBay saga gets weirder: CEO says he was suspended from eBay for selling stuff on eBay 'to pay for eBay'

The strange tale of the GameStop CEO who wants to buy eBay took a turn for the weirder overnight. Just hours after putting up a pile of stuff up for auction, purportedly to help finance the acquisition—a fundamentally preposterous claim and one he's clearly not making seriously, but we'll get into that later—Ryan Cohen said he'd been suspended from the platform for "putting the eBay community at risk," although the suspension was apparently lifted at some point as the account is now viewable again.

GameStop announced its intent to acquire the much larger eBay on May 3, making a half-cash, half-stock offer for the company worth roughly $56 billion. Just one problem: GameStop, as far as anyone can tell, doesn't actually have $56 billion, even with $20 in proposed financing from TD.

That led to a bizarre interview on CNBC, in which Cohen claimed he didn't understand the "pretty straightforward question" of where the money will come from, and repeatedly refused to answer it.

Fast-forward to May 6, and Cohen's message on X: "I'm selling stuff on eBay to pay for eBay." The "stuff" in question includes games and gaming swag, and a variety of sports cards, much of it quite expensive: A GameStop mousepad, for instance, is currently sitting at $1,525, while a Halo 2 Maser Chief statue is pushing $14,000.

But not long after he posted that message, there was trouble: Cohen claimed he'd been suspended from eBay for reasons unknown. An image of the suspension message said his account "has been permanently suspended because of activity that we believe was putting the eBay community at risk." His account was locked out, the message said, and his listing had been removed.

But either eBay has exceptionally responsive customer service, or, well, something else, because when I hit the link less than 12 hours later, the account was fine. I can't say if all the listings are there, but there's still an awful lot of stuff up for grabs.

In the immediate aftermath of the eBay announcement and that baffling CNBC interview, some people suggested the acquisition offer was a stunt—possibly to goose GameStop's share price, although I think that would be pretty obviously illegal. And if that is the intent, it sure doesn't seem to be working out.

My own feeling was that the acquisition bid probably isn't a stunt, but just grossly ill-considered. Now, though, I'm starting to wonder: Cohen obviously isn't going to make up a $14 billion shortfall by unloading a bunch of crap on eBay, but he is indeed unloading crap on eBay, and while the potential earnings are a pittance in corporate M&A terms, it does add up to a lot of money for normal people. Is that a stunt, to draw attention (and maybe supporting investments) to his not-a-stunt eBay acquisition proposal? Is he in fact a corporate genius, playing a 6D chess long game? Or is this all just weird self-aggrandizement?

I also have to wonder how many of these bids are serious. Is someone really going to pay more than $15,000 (plus shipping) for a couple of old GameStop signs? Not that I'm discounting the possibility, people with too much money tend to spend it on weird things. And frankly, non-rich people sometimes do weird things online too, especially when they get caught up in meme-fuelled japery. And if there's one thing we've learned about GameStop over the past few years, it's that japes are never out of the question, even in the staid world of corporate markets.

Whatever's going on, there is some potential unhappiness underlying it. As reported by Kotaku, some people, including Videogame History Foundation founder Frank Cifaldi, believe that at least some of the items Cohen is selling were taken from the Game Informer Vault, a significant collection of videogame memorabilia.

I am 100% positive these listings are from the legendary Game Informer vault being strip-mined for memes, in case you needed an excuse to throw up today

— @frankcifaldi.bsky.social (@frankcifaldi.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-05-07T21:38:39.085Z

When Game Informer was acquired by Gunzilla in 2025, the vault and its contents remained with original GI publisher GameStop. That would mean Cohen is probably within his rights to auction the stuff off as he sees fit (at least if he has the approval of the GameStop board of directors), but it would still kind of suck to see all that loot scattered to the wind.