Maybe all of this really is just a very dumb, pointless stunt. The strange tale of the GameStop CEO who wants to buy eBay took a turn for the weirder overnight. Just hours after putting up a pile of stuff up for auction, purportedly to help finance the acquisition—a fundamentally preposterous claim and one he's clearly not making seriously, but we'll get into that later—Ryan Cohen said he'd been suspended from the platform for "putting the eBay community at risk," although the suspension was apparently lifted at some point as the account is now viewable again. GameStop announced its intent to acquire the much larger eBay on May 3, making a half-cash, half-stock offer for the company worth roughly $56 billion. Just one problem: GameStop, as far as anyone can tell, doesn't actually have $56 billion, even with $20 in proposed financing from TD. That led to a bizarre interview on CNBC, in which Cohen claimed he didn't understand the "pretty straightforward question" of where the money will come from, and repeatedly refused to answer it. Fast-forward to May 6, and Cohen's message on X: "I'm selling stuff on eBay to pay for eBay." The "stuff" in question includes games and gaming swag, and a variety of sports cards, much of it quite expensive: A GameStop mousepad, for instance, is currently sitting at $1,525, while a Halo 2 Maser Chief statue is pushing $14,000. But not long after he posted that message, there was trouble: Cohen claimed he'd been suspended from eBay for reasons unknown. An image of the suspension message said his account "has been permanently suspended because of activity that we believe was putting the eBay community at risk." His account was locked out, the message said, and his listing had been removed. But either eBay has exceptionally responsive customer service, or, well, something else, because when I hit the link less than 12 hours later, the account was fine. I can't say if all the listings are there, but there's still an awful lot of stuff