GameStop Corporation (NYSE: GME) has been one of the most controversial stocks for quite some time. It was hated almost universally for years before Roaring Kitty and the “Stonks” meme traders blew the short sellers out of the water. But, in 2025, without making any crazy views — GameStop has two potential saving graces.
The first that is extremely popular with the crypto crowd is that Bitcoin has adopted a policy to treat Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset. While sales are still in decline, what matters for the crypto crowd is that GameStop’s prior day earnings release confirmed that the company still had cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities to the tune of $4.775 billion at the close of the quarter. This leaves a lot of room for GameStop to use aa strong balance sheet to start acquiring Bitcoin.
The less visible boost may actually be GameStop’s collectibles business that has launched as a PSA grading submission destination. And now you can also buy and sell graded Pokémon cards directly with the grading process on top of buying other collectibles at the stores and online. The company’s hardware and software sales remain in decline — as does its inventory, down to $480.2 million from $632.5 million.
GameStop’s collectibles unit sales increased by about 16% to $270.6 million (from $233.7 million in the year-ago quarter). It was just in October that GameStop announced its collaboration with Collectors (PSA grading) to become an authorized PSA dealer. And then in November, Collectors’ Chairman & CEO Nat Turner joined GameStop’s board of directors — a likely sign that the collaboration was looking to be successful.
One issue which is not known is just how much grading business is coming into PSA from GameStop, but grading times are backed up again. And Pokémon is currently seeing a large influx of new grading submissions along with the roster of new and rising sports superstars creating delays for graders to get their cards back as fast.
As GameStop is not communicating every detail of its earnings and individual metrics, the main focus is really what will happen with GameStop’s card grading collaboration and with Bitcoin purchases. It could even leave GameStop as a pure play on alternative assets like sports cards, nonsports cards and digital assets like Bitcoin.
GameStop’s mid-day reaction after earnings was up 16.1% at $29.50 with a $13 billion market cap. The 36 milllion shares traded mid-day already represented a 6x volume spike… but its 52-week range of $9.95 to $64.83 should signal that this one-day volatility is not out really all that unusual.
Maybe GameStop’s future is really more like CollectiblesStop — or better yet, AltsStop.
