GameStop is still called GameStop, but the business inside its stores is becoming much less dependent on video games.
In its second quarter of 2026, the company reported $356.3 million in collectibles sales. That was a 57% increase from the year before and represented 45.1% of total net sales. Collectibles now generate more revenue for GameStop than its traditional video game category.
The change is easy to see inside many stores. Trading cards, graded cards, figures, blind boxes, plush, and other physical objects are taking up more space. Services around collecting, such as card grading, give customers another reason to visit instead of ordering a game digitally. That does not mean games have stopped mattering. It means the culture around games has become a larger business than the box containing the game itself.
Digital downloads and subscription services have steadily removed software from the store shelf. Collectibles move in the opposite direction. Their value comes from being physical, displayable, tradable, and connected to a community. Scarcity matters. Condition matters. Seeing an object in person matters.
There is also more crossover than the category name suggests. Pokémon cards connect games, animation, collecting, competition, and fashion. A figure can operate as merchandise, design object, and memory at the same time. These products make sense in a store because discovery is part of the experience.
We have been watching a similar shift in projects like Parco Games, where games become part of a broader physical retail environment instead of sitting in a separate category.
For GameStop, the shift toward collectibles is partly a response to a difficult retail business. But it also reflects a real change in what customers want from a game store. If the software is increasingly digital, the store has to offer something else: objects, community, services, and reasons to spend time there.
The next version of game retail may sell fewer games while becoming more connected to gaming culture.
See GameStop’s second-quarter results.
Image: GameStop trading-card display, via @MorgenHatton.
