Ryan Cohen’s brief eBay resale push after his unsolicited bid for eBay brought in $168,421.39, with a Halo Master Chief statue leading at $15,100. The episode happened as eBay rejected GameStop’s offer and Cohen kept pressing for a combined path.
When Ryan Cohen posted listings on eBay to raise money after saying his bid was for eBay, he also turned the market into a kind of live scoreboard. A week later, the items were gone, sold through 105 bids on the top prize, and Cohen’s account brought in $168,421.39.
The CEO of GameStop described the stunt in plain terms on X earlier this month: “I’m selling stuff on eBay to pay for eBay.” He followed through. Listings closed, bids cleared, and the final tally landed on $168,421.39.
The highest-earning item was a large Master Chief statue from “Halo 2.” Listed for local pickup in Grapevine, Texas—where GameStop is headquartered—it sold for $15,100 and drew 105 bids.
Two store signs from shuttered GameStop locations followed closely. They sold for $14,921 with 105 bids. Cohen also sold two collectible statues from “South Park,” which fetched $13,400 after 87 bids.
Cohen’s card trading activity added to the spread. He sold a collectible card depicting Donald Trump’s 2016 swearing-in, graded as a PSA 10. That card sold for $6,470 with 44 bids. The buyer left Cohen a positive review, saying it was a “smooth transaction” with “excellent communication.”
Not every item netted big money. His lowest-earning listing was a 1995 baseball card of Vladimir Guerrero, which sold for $1,694 with 69 bids.
While the haul is substantial in everyday terms, it sits tiny against the deal Cohen has been pursuing. GameStop’s bid for eBay totals $55.5 billion, and Cohen’s $168,421.39 take amounts to about 0.0003% of the deal value—reinforcing that the sales were also about signaling, not scale.
The campaign carried friction inside eBay’s own systems. Cohen’s profile was briefly suspended after the platform’s system flagged high price points. eBay restored the account, but only after Cohen posted about the suspension on X.
There was at least one bidding episode that ran into policy limits, too. His socks drew attention early, at one point attracting bidding over $14,000. Used underwear and socks violate eBay’s used clothes policy.
For all the chatter around collectible prices, the bigger question now is whether Cohen can convert visibility into leverage.. He is pushing toward his goal of becoming CEO of a combined eBay and GameStop entity. but eBay has moved to block that path.. EBay earlier this week rejected GameStop’s offer, and eBay chairman Paul Pressler called the proposal “neither credible nor attractive.”
After the rejection, Cohen replied directly to Pressler by email, telling him the company “should not dismiss a $125 per share proposal without engaging on its substance” and adding that “shareholders deserve the opportunity to evaluate them,” the FT reported.
Cohen then kept the pressure on publicly. In an interview with Piers Morgan, he said he wasn’t finished: “They have a job to do the best for shareholders and engage on this, and if they don’t then we’ll do whatever we need to do,” he said.
Ryan Cohen GameStop eBay bid rejection Paul Pressler Halo 2 statue collectible trading PSA 10 card corporate activism M&A