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> GameStop is setup as a legal pawnshop in every state. So a pawnshop buying out eBay makes insane sense. It doesn't though. eBay could easily set itself up as

> GameStop is setup as a legal pawnshop in every state. So a pawnshop buying out eBay makes insane sense. It doesn't though. eBay could easily set itself up as a legal pawnshop in every state if it wanted to. It doesn't because there's no advantage to doing so. There are already third-party sellers in many areas who will take your physical merchandise and sell it on eBay in exchange for a cut. eBay doesn't need to enter that market, it's simply not profitable enough.

hnav 5mo ago
There's friction though, if the process is under one roof end-to-end, ebay can take 30-40% (15-20% today) of every transaction by just letting you dump your old stuff. Might even eat FB marketplace and CL.
- delfinom 5mo ago
  People trying to sell their used junk aren't going to accept a 30-40% cut. It's why they aren't using eBay these days in the first place.
  - hnav 5mo ago
    Not exactly, the biggest annoyance with eBay (in my experience) is dealing with shipping, disputes and returns. If I could recover even 50% of the value of unused items without dealing with the ridiculousness of p2p transactions (flakes, tire-kickers, scammers) I'd do it in a heartbeat.
    - digitaltrees 5mo ago
      Exactly this
    - noprocrasted 5mo ago
      Don't pawn shops already solve this problem? Make your way there, dump your stuff, get peanuts for it in exchange (but might still be worth it if you truly don't need said stuff).
      - coffeebeqn 5mo ago
        When your bright new business-saving idea is to be a pawn shop I might wonder is this the most efficient place for me to keep my capital in
  - charcircuit 5mo ago
    People regularly give businesses >50% cut to get cash immediately and this isn't even counting resellers who low ball people who don't know what they have.
  - cableshaft 5mo ago
    I would. I don't sell on eBay because it's a hassle to manage all the rest of it. So I end up taking it to a place like Half-Price Books instead and get hardly anything, but at least it gets out of the house. 30-40% cut would be a significant step up compared to what I get from those places.
  - iinnPP 5mo ago
    Speak for yourself. There's a reason places like Once Upon a Child and their parent stores exist. There's even other entirely digital stores on the sell for pennies instead of donating market. People are broke. Just not everyone.
    - PearlRiver 5mo ago
      Spending days of negotiating on eBay with annoying strangers and packing it all up for a few lousy hundred is not my idea of a good time. Let the workers at the recycling center sift through the stuff they are welcome to it.
  - prirun 5mo ago
    Checkout the insane amount of money Goodwill makes because of people getting rid of their "junk". There are 151 independent Goodwill organizations and all of them have a CEO, usually making 6 figures a year. https://paddockpost.com/2025/02/14/executive-compensation-at-goodwill-2023/ https://paddockpost.com/2025/02/14/executive-compensation-at... If people are giving stuff to Goodwill with no compensation, I'd say they definitely would give eBay stuff for a 30-40% cut.
    - FrojoS 5mo ago
      "Goodwill Industries was established in 1902 and is widely known across the country as the place where we all donate clothing and household goods to help others." That's the first sentence from your link. Clearly people don't treat this org, literally called "good will", the same as they treat freakin eBay.
    - neaden 5mo ago
      I don't think this is true, because people are often willing to spend a bit of extra time to do something good, like make a donation, but wouldn't be willing to take that same time to make $10.
  - freetime2 5mo ago
    I regularly accept a 40% cut or more at “Hard Off” (a chain store that buys and sells used electronics in Japan). Why? Because I don’t want to deal with the hassle and risk of selling the items myself. I’m able to bring in a box of items that I don’t use and are taking up space, and they pay me cash on the spot. It’s very convenient. I think eBay buyers would also have more confidence buying from eBay/Gamestop than direct from other users.
- ethbr1 5mo ago
  It's hard to get lower friction (register a new account) and lower fee (0%) than Craigslist.
digitaltrees 5mo ago
But the brick and mortar distribution is hard to build and gives a structural advantage. As another poster pointed out, you could sell your items locally and not need to deal with shipping, communication with buyers and other stuff. It would reduce friction which might actually expand the marketplace significantly. I personally have multiple family members that throw stuff away because listing on eBay is too hard and pawnshops too sketchy
- SwellJoe 5mo ago
  Why does it give structural advantage to own a bunch of dead mall and strip mall brick and mortar stores that have been on the verge of bankruptcy for well over a decade?
  - iinnPP 5mo ago
    GameStop in Canada owns stores in active malls and in standalone locations. Hard to see the store empty, even at 1030am on a weekday in November.
    - sanswork 5mo ago
      Gamestop in Canada isn't owned by Gamestop in the US. They were also historically unprofitable so people might be in the stores but they aren't buying enough.
      - iinnPP 5mo ago
        Now that you mentioned it, I seem to recall that news. The point stands that in some areas, that type of store can still perform. Perhaps they would come to an agreement.
  - 59percentmore 5mo ago
    They haven't been on the verge of bankruptcy since they paid off their own loans. This deal will actually be the closest they've been to bankruptcy since like 2022, because they'll actually have interest payments to make.
shaftway 5mo ago
You're right that there's no real advantage to eBay buying a pawnshop conglomerate, but a pawnshop conglomerate buying eBay gets a massive advantage. They're already sitting on a mountain of used inventory, and at some point a lot of it will be thrown away because there are no local buyers for it. Having a commission-free way to offload that inventory would be huge for them.
- crazygringo 5mo ago
  Ebay commissions are not that high, 13.25% for most items. The barrier to listing huge amounts of merchandise is not the commission, but rather the amount of labor it takes to list and price everything and pack and ship it and deal with refunds and returns for items that turn out to have problems. And how a lot of items are only economical to sell locally, because when you add in shipping costs it approaches the value of buying something new. Buying eBay doesn't provide any kind of easy way to help offload inventory at all. The way inventory is offloaded in bulk is in bulk pallets sold at auction, where people bid on them and then do all of the grunt work involved in photographing and listing and packing and shipping. Which is a significant proportion of sales on eBay today. GameStop can easily auction off pallets of their merchandise if they want, today. In fact, there's a good chance they already do.
  - shaftway 5mo ago
    > Ebay commissions are not that high, 13.25% for most items. 13.25% isn't zero. > The barrier to listing [is] the amount of labor it takes to list and price everything GameStop has a surprising amount of technology around their pawnshop activities. My son traded in his laptop last month and they had him wipe it, enable developer mode, and plug it in to do automated tests and make sure they knew what they were getting. They're already doing the labor to price everything. They're not going to have people type up listings, they'll just automate posting off of their inventory system. > when you add in shipping costs it approaches the value of buying something new. They get to skip the shipping costs. You could choose to have them ship the item to a GameStop near you which would cost them pennies. This is an advantage of having stores in every city with a population over 50,000 in the US. And a huge amount of the stuff that GameStop buys and sells is out of print. Buying new is simply not an option when you're talking about a game that was released 6 years ago only on physical media. > The way inventory is offloaded in bulk is in bulk pallets sold at auction, where people bid on them and then do all of the grunt work involved in photographing and listing and packing and shipping. There must be money in the margins here. Otherwise people wouldn't do it. GameStop has all the technological ability to cut out this grunt work.
Animats 5mo ago
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hnav 5mo ago

There's friction though, if the process is under one roof end-to-end, ebay can take 30-40% (15-20% today) of every transaction by just letting you dump your old stuff. Might even eat FB marketplace and CL.

delfinom 5mo ago
People trying to sell their used junk aren't going to accept a 30-40% cut. It's why they aren't using eBay these days in the first place.
- hnav 5mo ago
  Not exactly, the biggest annoyance with eBay (in my experience) is dealing with shipping, disputes and returns. If I could recover even 50% of the value of unused items without dealing with the ridiculousness of p2p transactions (flakes, tire-kickers, scammers) I'd do it in a heartbeat.
  - digitaltrees 5mo ago
    Exactly this
  - noprocrasted 5mo ago
    Don't pawn shops already solve this problem? Make your way there, dump your stuff, get peanuts for it in exchange (but might still be worth it if you truly don't need said stuff).
    - coffeebeqn 5mo ago
      When your bright new business-saving idea is to be a pawn shop I might wonder is this the most efficient place for me to keep my capital in
- charcircuit 5mo ago
  People regularly give businesses >50% cut to get cash immediately and this isn't even counting resellers who low ball people who don't know what they have.
- cableshaft 5mo ago
  I would. I don't sell on eBay because it's a hassle to manage all the rest of it. So I end up taking it to a place like Half-Price Books instead and get hardly anything, but at least it gets out of the house. 30-40% cut would be a significant step up compared to what I get from those places.
- iinnPP 5mo ago
  Speak for yourself. There's a reason places like Once Upon a Child and their parent stores exist. There's even other entirely digital stores on the sell for pennies instead of donating market. People are broke. Just not everyone.
  - PearlRiver 5mo ago
    Spending days of negotiating on eBay with annoying strangers and packing it all up for a few lousy hundred is not my idea of a good time. Let the workers at the recycling center sift through the stuff they are welcome to it.
- prirun 5mo ago
  Checkout the insane amount of money Goodwill makes because of people getting rid of their "junk". There are 151 independent Goodwill organizations and all of them have a CEO, usually making 6 figures a year. https://paddockpost.com/2025/02/14/executive-compensation-at-goodwill-2023/ https://paddockpost.com/2025/02/14/executive-compensation-at... If people are giving stuff to Goodwill with no compensation, I'd say they definitely would give eBay stuff for a 30-40% cut.
  - FrojoS 5mo ago
    "Goodwill Industries was established in 1902 and is widely known across the country as the place where we all donate clothing and household goods to help others." That's the first sentence from your link. Clearly people don't treat this org, literally called "good will", the same as they treat freakin eBay.
  - neaden 5mo ago
    I don't think this is true, because people are often willing to spend a bit of extra time to do something good, like make a donation, but wouldn't be willing to take that same time to make $10.
- freetime2 5mo ago
  I regularly accept a 40% cut or more at “Hard Off” (a chain store that buys and sells used electronics in Japan). Why? Because I don’t want to deal with the hassle and risk of selling the items myself. I’m able to bring in a box of items that I don’t use and are taking up space, and they pay me cash on the spot. It’s very convenient. I think eBay buyers would also have more confidence buying from eBay/Gamestop than direct from other users.
ethbr1 5mo ago
It's hard to get lower friction (register a new account) and lower fee (0%) than Craigslist.

digitaltrees 5mo ago

But the brick and mortar distribution is hard to build and gives a structural advantage. As another poster pointed out, you could sell your items locally and not need to deal with shipping, communication with buyers and other stuff. It would reduce friction which might actually expand the marketplace significantly. I personally have multiple family members that throw stuff away because listing on eBay is too hard and pawnshops too sketchy

SwellJoe 5mo ago
Why does it give structural advantage to own a bunch of dead mall and strip mall brick and mortar stores that have been on the verge of bankruptcy for well over a decade?
- iinnPP 5mo ago
  GameStop in Canada owns stores in active malls and in standalone locations. Hard to see the store empty, even at 1030am on a weekday in November.
  - sanswork 5mo ago
    Gamestop in Canada isn't owned by Gamestop in the US. They were also historically unprofitable so people might be in the stores but they aren't buying enough.
    - iinnPP 5mo ago
      Now that you mentioned it, I seem to recall that news. The point stands that in some areas, that type of store can still perform. Perhaps they would come to an agreement.
- 59percentmore 5mo ago
  They haven't been on the verge of bankruptcy since they paid off their own loans. This deal will actually be the closest they've been to bankruptcy since like 2022, because they'll actually have interest payments to make.

shaftway 5mo ago

You're right that there's no real advantage to eBay buying a pawnshop conglomerate, but a pawnshop conglomerate buying eBay gets a massive advantage. They're already sitting on a mountain of used inventory, and at some point a lot of it will be thrown away because there are no local buyers for it. Having a commission-free way to offload that inventory would be huge for them.

crazygringo 5mo ago
Ebay commissions are not that high, 13.25% for most items. The barrier to listing huge amounts of merchandise is not the commission, but rather the amount of labor it takes to list and price everything and pack and ship it and deal with refunds and returns for items that turn out to have problems. And how a lot of items are only economical to sell locally, because when you add in shipping costs it approaches the value of buying something new. Buying eBay doesn't provide any kind of easy way to help offload inventory at all. The way inventory is offloaded in bulk is in bulk pallets sold at auction, where people bid on them and then do all of the grunt work involved in photographing and listing and packing and shipping. Which is a significant proportion of sales on eBay today. GameStop can easily auction off pallets of their merchandise if they want, today. In fact, there's a good chance they already do.
- shaftway 5mo ago
  > Ebay commissions are not that high, 13.25% for most items. 13.25% isn't zero. > The barrier to listing [is] the amount of labor it takes to list and price everything GameStop has a surprising amount of technology around their pawnshop activities. My son traded in his laptop last month and they had him wipe it, enable developer mode, and plug it in to do automated tests and make sure they knew what they were getting. They're already doing the labor to price everything. They're not going to have people type up listings, they'll just automate posting off of their inventory system. > when you add in shipping costs it approaches the value of buying something new. They get to skip the shipping costs. You could choose to have them ship the item to a GameStop near you which would cost them pennies. This is an advantage of having stores in every city with a population over 50,000 in the US. And a huge amount of the stuff that GameStop buys and sells is out of print. Buying new is simply not an option when you're talking about a game that was released 6 years ago only on physical media. > The way inventory is offloaded in bulk is in bulk pallets sold at auction, where people bid on them and then do all of the grunt work involved in photographing and listing and packing and shipping. There must be money in the margins here. Otherwise people wouldn't do it. GameStop has all the technological ability to cut out this grunt work.

Animats 5mo ago

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