Comment by 59percentmore
7 hours ago
I don't think this is a serious assessment. For years, the core business of both companies has been facilitating the flow of used goods. Gamestop has moved strongly into collectibles recently, with a partnership with collectible grading firm PSA and the introduction of (essentially) lucrative trading card lootboxes, whereas eBay has capitalized on the same expansion of the collectibles market with new live/flash auction features.
IIRC, Gamestop recently had a "trade-in anything" day, where they accepted a variety of products for store credit. Seems an awful lot like this was some sort of test for accepting products in-store for eBay listings, or something along those lines. They already accept trading cards to send off to PSA for grading and to place into their lootbox system.
As far as efficiencies go, you can see things like shifting shipping by individual sellers to mass shipping to/from a warehouse, a much heavier footprint in collectibles, and perhaps quality control that reduces buyer disputes (this one's a bit iffy).
Well let's be clear, the "trade-in anything" day was a fancy discount day. They gave everybody $5 for whatever they brought in, online you can read from employees that they just donated or threw it all away, no attempt to actually keep any of it to sell.
That said IMO the biggest difference in the two situations you're describing is that EBay is not in the business of buying the items to then sell later, they just facilitate transactions between two parties and some of the logistics (depending on the seller). They're similar as far as dealing with "used goods" but the actual design of the business and risk being taken on is very different.
EBay also not really lacking what you're describing - there are fufillment centers that can be used for EBay listings, there's the EBay "Authenticity Guarantee" program for cards, they already own TCGplayer which does all of this for trading cards way better than GameStop does, etc.
Perhaps somehow these things could be improved by GameStop but I can't imagine it being significantly better than it currently is.
Can you tell me where your local eBay fulfillment center is? I can tell you where my local Gamestop is (no, not that one, the other one).
No, why does it matter? I also don't know where my local GameStop is since the few by me closed a couple years ago :P
Plenty of stuff on EBay offers me 2 day shipping clearly via fulfillment centers, as far as I'm concerned that's all that matters. Do you think the addition of GameStop stores would mean EBay can offer faster shipping than that on a significant number of items?
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I can't tell you where the nearest GameStop is because afaik they don't have any locations in my country. Can find half a dozen convenience stores that will handle eBay (or Amazon) goods for me within walking distance.
They are wildly different businesses. Ebay is not in the business of holding physical goods, they are a marketplace that connects buys, sellers, and shippers and adjudicates fraud, collects funds, handles taxes, etc. They are not a warehouse.
Gatestop is a retail operation that buys and sells goods. It takes on all the liability for fake products, it puts capital on the line to purchase used goods, it is a totally different (and worse) business
That’s not correct. eBay owns TCGplayer which has large warehouses and does direct shipping & fulfilment sales (tcgdirect).
eBay already had warehousing ops, I assume larger than tcgplayer’s.
Last year, eBay shut down tcgplayer’s only fulfillment facility in Rochester, NY and switched to using eBay’s facility in Kentucky.
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