NFL star who retired at 28 now making millions from selling Pokemon cards
Former NFL star Blake Martinez has made millions of dollars since retiring from professional football.
Martinez first entered the NFL in 2016 after being drafted by the Green Bay Packers. The former linebacker was the No.131 pick in the sixth round of the draft, and went on to have a relatively successful career.
The 29-year-old would spend four seasons with Green Bay before signing for the New York Giants in 2020. His time at the MetLife Stadium would last just two years, after suffering a season-ending ACL injury, before moving to the Las Vegas Raiders.
Martinez signed for the Raiders in September 2022, but just a couple of months later he would be calling time on his career in the NFL. November 10 last year saw the linebacker announce that he would be retiring from professional football at the age of 28, and has since moved into a new venture with his own company.
July 2022 saw Martinez start his own company, Blake’s Breaks, which specialises in selling high-valued trading cards. Despite only starting his new venture a year ago, Martinez is already making a lot of money.
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A report in The Athletic outlines a deal that saw Martinez part with a six-figure sum of money to acquire a rare Pokémon card. It’s stated that Martinez wired the sum which was sent via duffel bags across the globe to a seller in Japan who the ex-linebacker had never met.
After anxiously waiting for days and weeks for the card to arrive, Martinez is said to have been panicking over the deal. He is quoted having said: “I kept thinking, Holy s***, what did I do?”
Blake Martinez played for the Green Bay Packers, New York Giants and Las Vegas Raiders before retiring from the NFL (Cooper Neill/Getty Images)Eventually, the card would arrive and Martinez’s new business venture began gaining momentum. This deal is reported to have happened while Martinez was still with the Raiders, with him only being part of the franchise for two months.
It’s been reported that one Pokémon card put at auction from Martinez’s company was sold for $672,000 (£513,000). “And that wasn’t the last one,” Martinez said in the article. “Just a few weeks ago, I sold a second for $570,000.”
The article goes on to say that Martinez has earned a total of $11.5 million (£8.8m) in revenue with the new business since it started in July last year. Martinez is said to have close to 20 employees at his company, and has made some major sales in the past 12 months.
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