u/Interesting_Day_7734

"You know why $GME has never popped off this whole time?

You know the answer.

The institutions were never on the side of GME.

Larry Cheng’s initial screenshot?

GME’s institutional holdings: 33.92%.

He logged it "for future reference."

That’s absurdly low.

eBay sits around 90%.

Most S&P companies are 70-80%+.

Retail can spike a stock, but retail can’t sustain a move. There was no institutional bid.

It’s really that simple.

You know why GME is sitting at a 52-week low right now?

Because institutions are loading up.*

Now ask yourself, after this VWAP period, when institutions have $2.4 billion in equity of GME, which way do they want the stock to go?

You have a chance for generational wealth.

Don’t miss it."

*Exactly as I was saying earlier today.

I wrote a majority of this 6 months ago.

The phrase that really sticks out to me:

“Never been done before.”

That kind of language doesn’t fit selling a few more products, adding some Power Packs, or polishing up an old marketplace. So here’s how I’m looking at it in plain English.

Let me clear something up right away, because I think this is where people get lost. This isn’t just about grading cards. It isn’t just Power Packs. It isn’t a nicer marketplace with better graphics, and it sure isn’t putting lipstick on a pig and calling it innovation. That kind of thinking doesn’t move markets.

What problem actually exists?

Collectibles already trade everywhere. Trading cards, coins, comics, memorabilia and plenty more. These are already multi-billion-dollar markets, and combined globally you’re talking about a massive amount of money.

But everybody knows the ugly side too: fakes, disputes, guesswork, questionable condition, questionable authenticity and sometimes just plain old “hope the damn thing is real.”

That means trust is uneven, prices can be sloppy and serious money has to be careful. That is not really a product problem, that’s a market-structure problem.

Where GameStop actually fits

GameStop doesn’t necessarily have to grade everything itself. It doesn’t have to personally authenticate everything either. Those services already exist.

Verification for collectibles. That’s what I think GME needs to put together in one place, IMO.

Look at what already exists:

🃏 Trading Cards: Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), Beckett Grading Services (BGS), Certified Guaranty Company (CGC), Sportscard Guaranty (SGC).

🪙 Coins & Currency: Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS), Numismatic Guaranty Company (NGC), ANACS, Paper Money Guaranty (PMG).

📚 Comics: Certified Guaranty Company (CGC), Comic Book Certification Service (CBCS).

✍️ Autographs & Memorabilia: James Spence Authentication (JSA), Beckett Authentication Services (BAS), PSA/DNA.

🎮 Video Games: Wata Games, Video Game Authority (VGA).

🧸 Other / Mixed Collectibles: Authentication Services International (ASI), International Gemological Institute (IGI) for jewelry and gems, and Gemological Institute of America (GIA) for jewelry and gems.

Billions in collectibles.

The expertise already exists, graders already exist, authenticators already exist. Of course the collectibles already exist, and money already exists.

So what’s missing?

Who puts it together? Who sets the rules? Who decides what qualifies? Who defines the trusted lane? Who makes trust repeatable instead of negotiable?

That isn’t just retail, that is governance.

And governance is how markets change. I think GameStop sees a bunch of separate, mismatched systems and may be looking at a way to bring them together under one trusted structure.

That also explains why this could move fast, very fast. We're seeing it moving in real time.

GameStop wouldn’t have to create the demand. The demand already exists. Cards are already selling. Coins are already selling. Comics and memorabilia are already changing hands every day.

What changes is the structure around those transactions.

When trust goes up, friction goes down. When friction goes down, volume can concentrate. When volume concentrates around a trusted system, behavior starts changing.

That doesn’t necessarily take ten or even five years. It can happen surprisingly fast once buyers, sellers, collectors and serious money see that the system actually works.

And the size of this is where I think people underestimate the possibility. Cards alone are a multi-billion-dollar market. Then add coins, comics, sports memorabilia, entertainment memorabilia, video games, jewelry and other collectible categories, and suddenly the potential market gets a whole lot bigger.

If one governed system eventually becomes a preferred way for serious collectors to trade across multiple categories, then I don't think you're looking at a business capped at $10 billion or $20 billion. As it matures and expands, you're potentially dealing with hundreds of billions of dollars of underlying collectible markets.

It all starts sounding a whole lot more like capital-markets scale, and no, I’m not saying Power Packs replace everything. Power Packs are entertainment, probability and fun.

Governed resale is infrastructure.

Completely different tool. Completely different purpose. They can work together, but neither one has to depend on the other.

And that gets me back to Cohen’s words.

If all you’re doing is polishing the old system, you get old-system results. That doesn’t explain “never been done before.”

But if you build a structure where standards are clear, trust becomes repeatable, ownership and authenticity can be relied upon, and serious money knows where to go, then you’re not just adding another GameStop business line.

You’re changing how collectibles trade.

That, to me, is where the “never been done before” part starts making sense, That’s where the genius or foolish part makes sense.

It's where the capital-markets language starts making sense, the way I look at it, that isn’t hype, it’s common sense applied at scale.

There’s much, much more I could extrapolate from here, but I’m going to leave this one right here.

I believe I have an idea where this could be heading. And if I’m wrong about the final destination, that doesn’t necessarily mean the idea itself isn’t adding a valuable piece to the discussion. Because I’ve found a few other components that could fit extremely well into a serious, market-changing, never-been-done-before structure for the future.

But that’s another rabbit hole.

They say it’s been 84 years...

But through all those years, there’s been one constant.

GameStop.

Ryan, if you build it, they will come. 💎🙌🎮

GameStop

If you build it, If you build it, If you build it, If you build it, If you build it,... They will come. 🚀🚀🚀

Start with roughly 442.1M voting-eligible shares. Take out about 66.2M DRS shares at Computershare. Then take out roughly 38.35M actual shares controlled by Ryan Cohen/RC Ventures after separating the warrants. That leaves about 337.6M shares.

Now here's where the educated guess comes in. We know funds reposition, but they hold a certain amount. If roughly 125M shares are tied up with the big institutional/index boys like Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street and others, you're left with around 212.5M shares for retail brokerage accounts and everybody else in that remaining bucket.

Now I ain't saying retail owns every single one of those shares. I can't prove that from public filings, I thought I read the number in a filing. Pardon me, I couldn't find it.

But here's where the possum climbs the tree.

If we're working with roughly 2.19M GME shareholders, (yes an unproven but IMO relatively possible number) it would only take an average of about 97 shares each to account for 212.5M shares.

Some got 10. Some got 100. Some got 1,000. And some apes been buying dips so dang long they probably got GME shares stuffed under the couch cushions. lol

Does it prove retail owns 212M? Nope.

But does 97 shares per shareholder sound like some wild-ass impossible number? I personally don't think so.

Now, from previous public companies I've worked with, GME knows who owns what, but it changes constantly, usually not a lot per month or even Qtr though.

Sure makes me scratch my head. I would think likely the average shareholder owns an average between 150 - 250 shares. And a wide range of 1 to 2 million shareholders. Thanks for your time.

TradingSim updated its meme-stock analysis in June 2026, and they're still calling GameStop the original meme stock. They talk about the HODL crowd, diamond hands and investors willing to sit through some wild volatility. So let's compare that with some actual survey numbers instead of just guessing how this crowd invests.

The Harris Poll did a survey for Yahoo Finance during the original meme-stock run. They found the median amount invested in viral stocks was only $150. But here's where it gets interesting. 7% invested between $1,001 and $5,000, and another 8% invested more than $5,000. That's 15% putting more than $1,000 into these stocks. Those bigger investors pulled the AVERAGE all the way up to $8,533.

And I think about this, GME wasn't some little side note in the survey. 33% of the people who bought viral stocks said they bought GameStop. That DOES NOT mean 33% of all the money went into GME. It means roughly one out of every three viral-stock buyers surveyed had bought GME. That really caught my attention.

Now forget MOASS, shorts, buying the float and all that for a minute. Let's just do the math.

GameStop's June 2026 SEC filing reports 448,691,257 shares outstanding. I'm going to use $22 as an estimated average GME cost for this hypothetical since Coinbase says the average is $21.98.

Now here's the question. IF the estimate of around 2.2 million individual GME investors is close, what would their existing positions look like at some pretty ordinary dollar amounts?

At an average of $1,500 apiece, that's $3.3 BILLION invested, equal to about 150 million shares at $22.

At $2,000 apiece, that's $4.4 BILLION, or about 200 million shares.

At $2,500 apiece, that's $5.5 BILLION, or about 250 million shares.

That's only about 68, 91 or 114 shares per investor.

Now compare that with the survey. I'm NOT taking their $8,533 average and pretending every GME investor has $8,533 sitting in GameStop. I'm using MUCH smaller hypothetical averages of $1,500 to $2,500 and asking whether those numbers sound believable for this particular group of investors, especially after five years of people talking about buying, holding and adding shares.

Maybe the real average is $500. Maybe it's $1,500. Maybe it's $5,000. Hell, maybe we're way off in either direction. Maybe there's a massive amount of GME shareholders who own about a 20 share average each. That's the whole point of the question.

I'm not claiming retail owns 150, 200 or 250 million shares. I'm saying that's what the math produces under those assumptions. Just math from sources.

The Harris Poll gives us actual survey data about meme-stock investors. TradingSim gives us a current 2026 third-party description of this investor crowd. GameStop gives us the actual outstanding share count.

Put those together and here's what I'm curious about,

My question: What do y'all think the REAL average GME investor has invested?

Sources: The Harris Poll/Yahoo Finance viral-stock survey, February 2021; TradingSim, "Meme Stocks Explained for Beginners," updated June 2026; GameStop SEC filing, June 2026.

Ok, so yes, GME is down again. But as the world is still spinning GameStop will one day Appreciate Your time and enrich your investment value. NFA. It's my own personal logic and determination.

I promise you,,, we've never been closer.

This entire read is approximately 9 to 11 minutes. I expect the usual comments, but if you can give other possibilities then that's great.

The calculations and estimates presented here were developed using publicly available information together with assistance from multiple artificial intelligence (AI) systems. AI was used to help organize ideas, perform mathematical calculations, improve clarity, and identify areas where legal wording could be strengthened. The ideas were revised and refined over several hours and represent my own opinions, assumptions, and hypothetical scenarios.

Every investor should conduct their own independent research and make their own investment decisions.

Why I Started Thinking About This

Ever since GameStop announced that its existing warrants would become exercisable at a $32 strike price, I've wondered whether warrants could eventually become part of a much larger long-term financing strategy.

Personally, I expected GameStop's stock price to appreciate much more than it has. I have obviously been wrong about that expectation so far, and I freely admit I don't completely understand why the market has valued the company where it has. There may be perfectly reasonable explanations that I'm overlooking.

Rather than argue about today's stock price, I started asking a different question:

Could GameStop eventually finance an acquisition of eBay without relying primarily on private equity?

This article explores one possible answer.

It is not a prediction. It is simply a hypothetical financing framework based on publicly known information combined with clearly stated assumptions.

The Starting Point

Today, GameStop already owns approximately 43.4 million eBay shares, representing roughly 9.8% of eBay.

That investment alone changes the conversation.

For every $1 increase in eBay's stock price, the value of GameStop's investment increases by approximately $43.4 million.

If eBay's stock were to rise by $11, the value of that investment would increase by roughly $477 million.

Those are simple mathematical facts.

Existing Warrants

Nothing in this article suggests canceling or replacing the current GameStop warrants.

Quite the opposite.

I assume they remain outstanding exactly as they are today.

If fully exercised, they could potentially provide approximately $1.9 billion in additional capital.

What also caught my attention was that, according to GameStop's first-quarter 2026 filing, approximately $192,000 had already been raised through warrant exercises.

Financially, that amount is tiny compared with the company's overall balance sheet.

However, I personally find it interesting because some investors voluntarily chose to exercise their warrants and become common shareholders.

Others may interpret that differently.

To me, it suggests that at least some investors remain committed to the company's long-term future.

Direct Registration

Another fact worth noting is that approximately 65 million GameStop shares remain directly registered through Computershare.

That does not tell us what those shareholders will do in the future.

It does not mean they would participate in any future financing.

It simply demonstrates that a substantial number of shares continue to be held directly by long-term investors.

One Hypothetical Warrant Structure

Now comes the speculative part.

Suppose that, sometime in the future, GameStop's Board of Directors decided that additional equity financing made strategic sense.

For illustration purposes only, assume the company issued five additional classes of warrants to existing shareholders using approximate strike prices of:

$25

$28

$32

$36

$42

Using those assumptions, and assuming full participation, such a structure could potentially raise approximately $7 billion in additional equity capital.

These numbers are nothing more than assumptions used to illustrate one possible financing model.

Only GameStop's Board of Directors could determine whether issuing additional warrants would ever be appropriate.

Why Warrants?

Traditional stock offerings immediately dilute shareholders.

A warrant structure would instead allow capital to be raised gradually as higher stock prices are achieved and warrants are voluntarily exercised.

Participation would remain entirely voluntary.

Every shareholder would independently decide whether participating fits his or her own investment objectives.

No one is obligated to participate.

Closing the Financing Gap

To me, this is where the discussion becomes interesting.

The financing gap does not have to be closed by one single event.

Instead, it could potentially narrow over time through several independent factors working together.

Those could include:

• Existing cash reserves.

• Continued operating growth.

• Continued profitability.

• Expansion of the collectibles business.

• International growth.

• Appreciation in the value of GameStop's investment in eBay.

• Existing warrant exercises.

• Possible future warrant offerings.

• Traditional financing if available.

• A higher GameStop stock price.

Each one reduces the financing gap a little more.

No single factor has to accomplish the entire transaction by itself.

Why Stock Price Matters

Assume, for illustration purposes, that eBay were valued at approximately $53 billion.

Also assume that a future acquisition were structured using approximately 50% cash and 50% GameStop stock.

If GameStop traded around $23 per share, the stock portion alone would require issuing roughly 1.15 billion new shares.

Now assume that over time GameStop continued growing its business, existing warrants remained in place, additional capital was raised, revenues continued increasing, and the stock eventually reached approximately $50 per share.

The exact same stock portion of the transaction would then require issuing only about 530 million new shares.

That is roughly 620 million fewer shares than would be required today.

That is one reason I believe continued business growth and a higher valuation could dramatically improve GameStop's negotiating position.

Retail Capital vs. Private Equity

Private equity is one possible path.

Retail-supported equity financing is another possible path.

I personally don't trust Private Equity groups as much as I do individual multiple year shareholders.

Ryan Cohen has already demonstrated his willingness to invest significant amounts of his own capital into GameStop. $500Milliom was his words.(Edit: correction) I'm willing to invest my money also, $5k or more from me is possible, I just have to see how my personal finances work out.

Likewise, every individual investor is free to decide whether additional investment fits his or her own long-term investment goals.

I am not suggesting anyone buy stock.

I am not suggesting anyone exercise warrants.

Every investor should make those decisions independently.

I am simply asking whether voluntary shareholder participation could become one component of a much broader financing strategy if the company ever chose to pursue it.

Final Thoughts

Could all of this happen?

Absolutely.

Could none of it happen?

Absolutely.

Only GameStop's Board of Directors knows what strategies are actually being considered.

This article isn't intended to predict the future.

It isn't intended to organize shareholders.

It isn't intended to pressure management.

It's simply one investor's attempt to explore a financing framework that, in my opinion, deserves thoughtful discussion.

Whether you agree with it or completely disagree with it, I hope it encourages people to think a little differently about how a transformational acquisition could potentially be financed over time.

Sometimes the most interesting ideas begin with one simple question:

"What if?"

I believe this is where the average and common man is currently. Think of those below average.

The world is in sad condition.

A couple of questions if answered, we could expect GameStop or Cohen to act on.

What's the one move that creates the most value?

What increases GameStop's bargaining power the fastest without unnecessarily increasing risk?

Also,

If Ryan Cohen bought a $100Million GME next week, what would you think?

Then another $100Million the next week?

Possibly the next also, or skip a week or two, just wondering. He said he was going to put $500Million into this transaction.

However, he can't do that buying eBay shares now, it would cause a lot of problems, but he can buy GME. To me that's part of this "transaction", others may not agree.

What if GME is buying back shares, or starts buying back shares. Obviously the BOD and RC believe it's undervalued. If it was trading at $25 six months ago, and now has record earnings, and a lot of other good things have happened, I certainly believe it's undervalued.

It doesn't matter much what eBay's stock price is. If it goes up or down, either way it's good for GME.

But if GME's stock price goes up,,, that's another thing. Take out more of the float, that adds value to GME.

What do you think?

Cohen has a great business plan, he's targeting the right goals. But has to fight an entrenched BOD and that's like fighting all of the other Wallstreet BODs.

They hate that retail investors slaughtered them and they resorted to corrupt tactics. They were already involved in corrupt tactics so what's another devious move? The SEC just hands out minor fines and a slap on the wrist. Then they go their way with the money they've swindled from retail investors, and in the back rooms there's celebration and slaps on the back. The old boys club, and retail is not invited.

This is a Great opportunity for retail to muscle up and support fellow investors. The biggest being Ryan Cohen! GME is 40% of my entire portfolio, it used to be over 50% before it was shorted down and is still being held down.

The Street purposely held it down during Cohen's interview, that's part of their MO. I'm sick of the Wallstreet elite. If Cohen and GME buy up GME stock, and retail investors decide it's "happening" then it will actually Happen!

NFA, investors do what they want, but I see this as a Sure Thing. And shills and FUDsters can lick boots.

I continue to buy, others continue to buy, eventually it'll pay off, I'm betting half my money on it. If it wasn't for the other half doing so well, I'd probably go up to 70%. And that's breaking my personal rules on investment diversity.

Bottom line, I want GME to buy eBay about as much as Cohen does! (assumption) But just as much, probably more in fact, I want to see retail investors beat Wallstreet, right here with GME, and now is a great opportunity IMO. I'm not giving financial advice, and I'm not trying to organize a takeover strategy, I already see individual investors here now. Over 5 years Here!

I'd just feel so much satisfaction in seeing GME succeed and build the company on the rails of eBay and watch my money grow exponentially. Cohen has others with big money supporting him, they're there to provide a huge amount of financing. Reading news articles that say GME may be as much as 80% undervalued didn't come from me, but I agree it's way undervalued.

That's what I have to say about that. We'll see.

The Wild West of the Pink Sheets: The Story of CSMA

In the mid-1990s, the stock market had a dark, untamed underbelly. Long before smartphones and high-speed trading apps, there was the OTC (Over-the-Counter) Pink Sheets—a literal stack of pink-colored paper distributed to brokers every morning, listing thousands of microscopic, obscure companies. It was a world of absolute speculation, thin regulation, and staggering volatility.

This is the story of how a small Southwest novelty business transformed into a multi-million-dollar federal fraud case, charting a course from harmless dreamcatchers to a high-stakes "pump and dump" scheme.

Chapter 1: The Dreamcatcher Illusion (Ticker: CSMA)

Our story begins in Farmington, New Mexico, during the peak of the 1990s penny stock boom. Two businessmen, Olin Glover and H.K. Elrod, alongside a minor partner named Jim Walker, decided to tap into the public’s growing obsession with Southwestern art and Native American-style novelties.

They formed a company called CSMA, Ltd. (also known as Consolidated CSMA). While the actual physical business—operating under names like Dream Catchers USA—manufactured, imported, and distributed mass-market dreamcatchers, the founders had a second, more lucrative product: corporate stock.

Glover, serving as the CEO and majority shareholder, and Elrod, acting as a prominent director, pushed CSMA onto the OTC markets. In the '90s, these micro-cap stocks traded for fractions of a penny. Because public information was scarce and financial reporting requirements were practically non-existent, the stock price could double or triple on a simple rumor, only to crash back to zero the next day.

For a few years, CSMA, Ltd. survived on the fringes of the market. But a business built on novelties couldn't sustain its corporate weight. As the '90s drew to a close, the dreamcatcher business dried up. CSMA stopped filing its state taxes, and New Mexico regulators revoked its corporate charter. The company went completely dark, leaving its original four-letter ticker symbol, CSMA, entirely vacant. (Decades later, Credit Suisse would happen to reuse those same letters for an investment note, completely burying the memory of the New Mexico dreamcatcher company).

Chapter 2: The Shell Game Shift (Ticker: WWNG)

In the penny stock world, an old corporate structure rarely stays dead. Even though the dreamcatchers were gone, Glover and Elrod still possessed their most valuable asset: a corporate shell that could be repurposed.

In 1999, operating out of the exact same Farmington office building at 400 Sandstone Ave, the group completely pivoted. They abandoned retail novelties and jumped headfirst into the energy sector, forming WW Energy, Inc., trading under the new ticker symbol WWNG.

Instead of feathers and beads, WW Energy bought a fleet of trucks to haul water and oil-field logistics in the booming Southwest petroleum patches. On paper, it looked like a legitimate corporate turnaround. In reality, it became a playground for market predators.

Chapter 3: The Billionaire’s Son and the Hoax Faxes

Enter Michael O. Pickens. Michael was no ordinary penny-stock hustler; he was the son of legendary billionaire Texas oil tycoon and corporate raider T. Boone Pickens. However, the elder Pickens had completely distanced himself from his son, who had carved out a notorious career as a rogue stock promoter.

In late 2004, Michael Pickens set his sights on WW Energy (WWNG). He didn't care about the company's trucks or its water-hauling contracts; he only cared about the volatility of its penny stock.

Pickens engineered a brilliantly deceptive market manipulation tactic known as the "Hoax Fax" scheme:

He blasted out hundreds of thousands of spam faxes to businesses and homes across America.

The faxes were deliberately formatted to look like a messy, handwritten, highly confidential note sent by a frantic stockbroker to a wealthy client.

The handwritten note read like an accidental "misdirected tip," screaming that WW Energy was about to close a massive, secret oil deal and that the reader needed to buy shares immediately before the price exploded.

Thousands of everyday retail investors fell for the trick, rushing to their phones and computers to buy WWNG stock. As buying volume surged, the stock price artificially spiked. Seizing the moment, Pickens and his insiders aggressively dumped their own shares into the hyped market, pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars in illicit profits, while leaving innocent investors holding worthless shares when the price inevitably collapsed.

Chapter 4: The Final Reckoning

The scheme was too loud to ignore. On July 18, 2005, federal authorities arrested Michael O. Pickens. By October 2006, Pickens stood in a federal court and pleaded guilty to three counts of securities fraud, with the manipulation of WW Energy stock serving as a cornerstone of the criminal indictment against him.

The legal dominoes kept falling. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched a massive dragnet into the internal corporate practices of WW Energy itself. Investigators uncovered toxic stock promotions, fabricated financial reporting, and fraudulent share issuances orchestrated by the insiders.

The final blow landed on October 14, 2009, when federal clearing corporations officially expelled the stock. The SEC stripped the company of its registration entirely, effectively freezing all trading forever.

The corporate lineage that began with H.K. Elrod, Olin Glover, and a warehouse full of New Mexico dreamcatchers under the ticker CSMA had finally reached its end—leaving behind a trail of federal indictments, revoked charters, and a perfect historical blueprint of the wild, lawless era of the 1990s penny stock market.

FWIW: Mike had abuse problems like millions of others, he was misguided and made mistakes, but he was a very likeable person. I Know.

Brokers and institutions know who's buying and they're not going to support the volume. They are in a lose-lose situation.

The warrants on the other hand are cheap, the volume is higher, as they're soaking them up for "insurance".

I've seen this before, classic setup.

NFA

Because I can only speculate.

Besides over 30 years of experience installing and fixing metal roofs.

Let the argument continue. Put the screws in the flat, that's just more money for me when I go fix the roof or replace it

Just to simplify this speculation, I'll try and be brief.

I think Cohen timed things in a particular order, knowing the likelihood of the outcomes. It came to the right time, and Cohen jumped in deep. Very,v very big deal that's— never been done before in the capital markets.

We've yet to see it, right?

The Hollow Man. Cohen taunting eBay's BOD. Offer declined. Vote on item #4 for eBay, could have passed, but doesn't matter in the big picture.

His withdrawal of his incentive package, brilliant IMO, this part of the plan. A minor KCS, focus on that, while I'm doing this.

Timing is great. Record earnings, June 29th Russell 1000, 2000, 3000 reset, even if it wasn't eBay or GME. eBay BOD selling, Cohen buying! Really rubbing the truth in their faces, everyone acknowledges it, even if other Hollow Men don't say it publicly.

GME continues making filing after filing, keeping it all transparent, what he wants everyone to focus on.

Cohen now publicly and transparently stating "The media, Funds, Wall Street executives, all wanting GME to fail. Why? Cohen is explaining.

However, he's Not going to show what he's actually holding.