GameStop to Double-Down on 'High Margin Potential' Trading Cards, Pokémon TGC and the Like a 'Natural Extension of Our Existing Business'

GameStop is doubling-down connected trading cards.

In its 2025 Annual Meeting, CEO Ryan Cohen told shareholders that the institution had seen its archetypal profitable opening 4th since 2019 owed to "reducing costs, cutting excess inventory, streamlining headcount, closing unprofitable stores, exiting under-performing geographies, and focusing connected the halfway fundamentals of the business."

And those fundamentals, it turns out, are trading cards, which Cohen called a "natural extension" of a crippled retailer with a concatenation of carnal stores.

"We are focusing connected trading cards arsenic a earthy hold of our existing business," Cohen said. "The trading paper marketplace — whether it's sports, Pokémon, oregon collectibles, is aligned with our practice — it fits our trading model, it appeals to our halfway lawsuit base, and it's profoundly embedded successful carnal retail. Unlike software, it's tactile. Unlike hardware, it has precocious borderline potential. It's a logical expansion." The announcement sent stocks tumbling 22%.

GameStop precocious helped motorboat Switch 2, but it sees trading cards arsenic its future. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

There is undoubtedly a immense request for trading cards close now, peculiarly Pokémon trading cards. Since the rarest paper sold successful 2022 for much than $5 cardinal prices person rocketed, with Tokyo constabulary reporting an unprecedented fig of trading paper thefts successful the second fractional of 2022. Examples see a Minnesota store reportedly having astir $250,000 worthy of cards stolen and a Tokyo antheral allegedly launching a full-on heist to get cards. Even an Alabama constabulary serviceman was allegedly fired for pocketing cards successful Walmart, and conscionable past month, a antheral successful the UK was arrested aft constabulary discovered helium was harboring a cache of stolen Pokémon cards worthy £250,000 (approx. $332,500).

After telling shareholders GameStop unit didn't "waste clip successful Zoom meetings" oregon "in PowerPoint decks," Cohen said that portion successful "corporate America, it's wholly mean to spot excessive enforcement pay, DEI initiatives that prioritize representation implicit merit, managers managing to Wall Street's abbreviated word expectations and analysts, and boards handing retired escaped banal similar candy to radical who would ne'er bargain a stock themselves," that wasn't "how [GameStop] operates."

Earlier this twelvemonth we learned GameStop would beryllium closing much stores and revising its concern argumentation to put successful Bitcoin. This would pb to the closure of an unspecified but "significant number" of stores successful fiscal twelvemonth 2025.

Around the aforesaid time, GameStop announced its committee had "unanimously approved" an update to its concern policy, adding Bitcoin arsenic a treasury reserve asset. In the aforementioned filing, the institution said a "portion of [its] currency oregon aboriginal indebtedness and equity issuances whitethorn beryllium invested successful Bitcoin." GameStop has not acceptable a maximum magnitude of Bitcoin it could accumulate, and said it whitethorn merchantability immoderate Bitcoin it acquires.

Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Vikki Blake is simply a newsman for IGN, arsenic good arsenic a critic, columnist, and advisor with 15+ years acquisition moving with immoderate of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's besides a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her astatine BlueSky.