GameStop is struggling to acquire inventory to match demand for its Power Packs trading card platform, CEO Ryan Cohen said in an interview Monday.
Speaking with TBPN, Cohen said both physical and digital Power Packs products have sold well, and the current challenge is acquiring cards at the right margins.
“If you look at digital Power Packs, we’ve kept it pretty limited in terms of being able to get into the digital category and frankly it’s not a marketing thing, we just can’t get enough inventory — and it’s the same thing on the physical thing,” Cohen said. “... Can't get enough inventory, at least at a price where we can — you can buy inventory at 110% or 120% market value, but we’re not going to start doing stupid stuff like that.”
GameStop launched the digital Power Packs platform in July through a partnership with third-party grading company PSA. Each pack contains one PSA-graded card, which can be shipped to the customer, stored in a collection or sold back to GameStop.
Supercut of everything $GME CEO @ryancohen said about Power Packs in our interview with him today: pic.twitter.com/Q3YuotVQw1
— TBPN (@tbpn) October 20, 2025
Trading cards and collectibles have become an increasingly important part of GameStop’s business. The category, which includes trading cards, apparel, toys, gadgets and other pop culture items, delivered more than $200 million in net sales for the third consecutive quarter in Q2. That result also outpaced the retailer’s software business for the second consecutive quarter.
“Along comes collectibles and obviously after expanding into categories where there’s very little success, your risk appetite at that point is pretty low,” Cohen said. “All of a sudden we see the GameStop customer really when it comes to trading cards, there’s a strong appetite. That category has done very well and we’ve gone from 10% of our sales to close to a third for the full year is going to come from collectibles.”
GameStop’s expansion into the category has arrived alongside a global surge in interest for trading card games, including the Pokémon franchise. The retailer has also continued to leverage its relationship with PSA, which began in May 2024 when GameStop announced it would begin buying and selling PSA-graded cards.
That partnership expanded in October 2024 when GameStop began accepting grading submissions at select locations. GameStop reported in May that more than 1 million cards had been graded through the program.
Though the expansion into collectibles and trading cards has been highly successful for GameStop, Cohen used caution when speaking about the category’s long-term viability.
“There’s definitely a comeback right now on trading cards, so it’s looked at as a store of value. Whether that continues or not, who knows?” Cohen said. “Everyone is like well it’s going to continue, everyone thinks crypto is going to continue. Nobody knows.
“We’re having a lot of success when you look at our assets right now. The way it stands right now is we’re selling the product very quickly. The more inventory we have, we can sell the product. We’re going to run efficiently and if we can sell the product, great. If it happens where we can’t sell the product, we’re going to adjust and we’re going to lower our costs and focus on the things that make sense.”
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture. He was previously the Collectibles Editor at Sports Illustrated. You can follow him on X and Instagram @benmburrows.