GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen says his account was suspended from eBay amid a drive to sell items on the auction site he’s trying to buy for $56 billion.
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Yesterday, billionaire entrepreneur Cohen tweeted to say he was “selling stuff on eBay to pay for eBay,” amid questions about how he would raise enough money to buy the business. Listings include baseball cards, a pair of socks (for over $14,000!), and even GameStop store signs at ridiculous prices. Each listing also includes a hand-signed 'Letter to eBay' as a "THANK YOU for your support."
Cohen then tweeted that he was on the phone to eBay after being told he had reached the $50,000 per month limit for sales.
on phone with customer support @eBay . please respond @eBay pic.twitter.com/HuUKxwivqN
— Ryan Cohen (@ryancohen) May 6, 2026
While clearly a stunt, Cohen has followed up his selling spree to say he was suspended from eBay, alongside an image of an apparent notice that claims the decision was made “because of activity that we believe was putting the eBay community at risk.”
I have been suspended from eBay pic.twitter.com/0vadYCQ6KE
— Ryan Cohen (@ryancohen) May 7, 2026
However, the account is, at the time of this article's publication, active, with bids in place for the various items Cohen has put up for sale. So, either Cohen was subsequently reinstated — despite the notice allegedly saying Cohen had been "permanently" suspended, or, yes, this is just another stunt. IGN has asked eBay for clarification.
Cohen began selling items on eBay following a bizarre interview in which he continued to say he didn’t understand questions about where he would get all the money he needs to buy the company.
Earlier this week, GameStop made an unsolicited $55.5 billion offer to buy eBay at $125.00 per share in cash and stock. Cohen, who would become CEO of the combined company should the deal go through, says he wants to make eBay a “legit competitor to Amazon” as he bids to grow his business beyond games and collectibles and hit a $35 billion payout in the process.
GameStop said the cash part of the offer is expected to be funded from a combination of cash and liquid investments on GameStop’s balance sheet, which totaled $9.4 billion as of January 31, 2026, and “third-party acquisition financing,” with up to $20 billion in debt financing from TD Securities.
With GameStop currently valued at $10.69 billion (assuming GameStop is providing all its stock for the deal), Cohen is looking at a $16 billion shortfall. But in an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box programme, Cohen repeatedly refused to say where the money would come from, insisting he didn’t understand the line of questioning and repeatedly pointing to the GameStop website.
“It’s on our website. It’s half cash, half stock. But the details are on our website,” Cohen replied when interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin asked to make “the math math.” The suggestion is that the proposed deal could require significant share issuances that would massively dilute existing shareholders.
The Wall Street Journal has said Cohen may turn to Middle Eastern sovereign-wealth funds to plug the money gap, but he failed to suggest that would be the case in the interview.
Will eBay go for the deal? The auction website told IGN it had no discussions with or outreach from GameStop prior to receiving the proposal, but it said its Board of Directors, in consultation with its financial and legal advisors, “will carefully review and consider the unsolicited proposal to determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interests of the company and all eBay shareholders.”
“The Board will review this proposal with a focus on the value to be delivered to eBay shareholders, including the value of the GameStop stock consideration and the ability of GameStop to deliver a binding, actionable proposal,” eBay continued.
It’s worth noting that Cohen could make up to $35 billion in stock if the company’s market value hits $100 billion, among other compensation package criteria. In January, the 40-year-old billionaire told The Wall Street Journal he wanted a “big” deal that is “ultimately either going to be genius or totally, totally foolish.”
As of January, Cohen had a stake of over 9% in GameStop and was its biggest individual shareholder. Investor Michael Burry, who owns shares in the company, said earlier this year that Cohen “has a crappy business, and he is milking it best he can while taking advantage of the meme stock phenomenon to raise cash and wait for an opportunity to make a big buy of a real growing cash cow business.”
At the beginning of 2025, GameStop had around 2,325 locations in the U.S., but by the end of the year it had closed 590 of them. It then kicked off 2026 by closing even more stores as part of an effort to reduce costs.
For years now some have called GameStop a dying bricks and mortar retailer as it looks to new and often bizarre ways to generate revenue. August 2023 saw the company pull out of crypto, and it shut its short-lived NFT marketplace just a few months later. More recently (and much to the dismay of its employees), GameStop held its first-ever Trade Anything Day, which saw customers bringing in literally anything for trade-in credit at their local stores.
Photo illustration by Cheng Xin/Getty Images.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].