Published May 6, 2026, 12:02 PM EDT GameStop needs to raise $56 billion in order to afford its proposed acquisition Image: The Pokémon Company On Monday, GameStop astounded the world by revealing its intention to purchase eBay , a tech company worth many billions more than the video game retailer. The immediate question on everyone's mind was how GameStop was going to afford such an enormous purchase. The answer, it turns out, is kind of the way that the company is staying afloat at all: Pokémon cards. GameStop sells something called Power Packs , which are bundles of Pokémon cards that come in different tiers. The higher the tier, the better the chances that the pack will contain high-value cards. Critically, GameStop itself decides what a pack contains. Power Packs might sound shady, but the alternative is paying three to five times the manufacturer's suggested retail price for any given Pokémon TCG product. Previously, GameStop sold Power Packs in tiers ranging between $25 and $2,500.…