Seems like a no brainer for people who want to go into a physical store without dealing with the hassle of waiting for the item to sell along with packaging and shipping.

This doesn't make any sense to me, and seems like the exact opposite of what eBay is, but maybe we use eBay differently? When I use it, I am looking for something specific. The chance a random location nearby has that thing is basically 0. If I want to peruse random thrift items, I would go to a thrift store.

The person you replied to was talking about selling, not buying.

Wouldn’t buying up pawn shops be a better bet, then?

A physical store stocked with what? EBay’s strength in today's world is its enormous base of third party sellers all over the world carrying the most niche odds and ends you can think of. Just to be able to show these seller's merchandise in stores would be a massive logistical nightmare. No physical store and certainly not the ones GameStop sized can carry a fraction of what eBay has to offer. They have to fundamentally reshape the business and throw away what made them successful if they want physical stores to make any sense.

ebay started attempting consignment more than ten years ago, but I think lately they only do it for luxury items. Which makes sense to me as a lot of people would just send in junk. https://pages.ebay.com/ebay-consignment/

How would that even work? You can only keep so physical items in a store, plus all the costs of a store ...

Who wants to go to a physical store in 2026?

I do. Its great. You can walk around, look at things, talk to people, maybe buy something you wouldn't based on cover art or whatever. You get to drive a little, listen to some music.

Legitimately. Especially if it's a book shop.

Book shops are actually one of the few physical stores I still want to visit

I could maybe see this argument in 2018 or something

In 2026? Online shopping is full of low quality knockoff crap, with deveptive listings that are trying to trick you. Yes, I absolutely prefer physical stores again. In fact I've pretty much stopped online shopping altogether again

Maybe you're just online shopping on Amazon and Temu like it's 2018. It's 2026, low quality knockoff crap is sold in physical stores just as much as online. You just have to pay attention to what you're buying which is true irl and online.

Here in 2026, Gamestop has closed more than 4,000 stores and only has about 2,000 stores open.

The people have voted with their feet, despite anecdata

Gamestop sells a lot more collectables than just Funko Pops. I'm not a collector myself, but if I were I imagine I would prefer to see the thing in person to make sure of its condition before buying.

Me. I love the experience of getting out of the house. Also, online shopping is an extortionist on certain items. There are so many things that are 1/4 the price in a physical store than they are online due to shipping and logistics.

I like browsing stuff in stores too, but that's not what eBay is for - I'm in Australia, the whole point is I can buy stuff from other states in my country, or from the US or other countries if I need, and in the same way I can sell stuff to people in Europe or the UK or Canada or the US from home.

Seeing stuff in person is cool but for an 'eBay Store' you're only going to have a tiny assortment of items, and likely hardly anything you really want in any one physical location... These kind of things already exist (e.g. pawn shops, or here in Australia we have a chain called Cash Converters but it's mostly disappearing) and eBay's value proposition is different in that it opens that up from just items from people within driving range, to anyone around the world.

So having physical stores doesn't add much value for eBay.

I always prefer that. When I buy something online, it's always because I couldn't find something suitable in a real store.

GameStop is going to acquire BestBuy

Pretty interesting stuff haha

In a memo to staff, Sharma made three commitments: great games, the “return of Xbox,” and to “invent new business models and new ways to play.”

Reminds me of Lakhovsky's book, The Secret of Life

It reminds me of Biologically Closed Electric Circuits - Bjorn Nordenstrom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKXH_4PNPcQ

Interesting, thanks for sharing this

Rewatched the Russian Five movie the other day, what an interesting story.

They should really not charge for the old Xbox Live subscription to play multiplayer and keep the subscriptions for access to the Netflix style library of games, long overdue.

You used to have Xbox Live Gold and Silver, they ought to just make a Bronze level that allows free multiplayer but spams you with ads, Silver allows multiplayer ad-free and a limited selection of rotated games ala the epic store freebies, and gold includes the Game Pass functionality + everything else and a special cosmetic tag so people know you're a Serious Gamer. Could even go with Xbox Live Diamond which is $100 a month and only includes a diamond tag and some microsoft store credit each month, to capture the financially irresponsible market.

or a third party

This is awesome, they do tours of one of his houses near me, thanks for sharing

The houses he built are always very pretty, but they are just really fancy Brady bunch houses to my eye.