Retired NFL Player Blake Martinez Makes $5 Million Selling Pokemon Cards

The NFL is a $1 billion business. But, for certain athletes, a lengthy career is not worthwhile. After one month of playing with the Las Vegas Raiders, seasoned linebacker Blake Martinez, 28, announced his retirement from the NFL in November. He committed all of his attention to his new venture, trading Pokémon cards.

After starting the business as a pastime after rupturing his ACL in 2021, he formed Blake’s Breaks in July. According to CNBC Make It, he has earned $5 million since then.

Martinez feels that the compromise has been well worth it.

Retired NFL Player Blake Martinez Makes $5 Million Selling Pokemon Cards

Blake Martinez abruptly left the NFL in the middle of the 2022 season, and he then made an unconventional career change. At the moment, Martinez, a player for the Las Vegas Raiders, made the decision to focus only on the side business he had begun during the COVID-19 pandemic: purchasing and selling Pokemon cards.

He made the decision to invest after learning that Pokemon cards were for thousands of dollars during the Covid-19 outbreak. He did this by purchasing a number of boxes, which he would then open and sell the cards through Whatnot.

When the epidemic first started in 2020, Martinez, 29, started reselling his Pokemon cards because he observed how much money other influencers were getting from the fad. He spent hundreds of dollars on packs of cards, some of which were worthless, and even mentioned Pokemon cards during several of his Giants news appearances in 2021. The rare Pikachu card Martinez finally sold for $672,000 in October and brought to the Las Vegas “Pawn Stars” Gold & Silver Pawn Shop was his big break.

After being released by the Giants in September following two seasons in New York, Martinez told CNBC he made the decision to devote more attention to his business. Martinez said he spent even though he continued to sign with the Raiders Martinez said he spent 80 hours a week on his company in between his time with the team. A quarter of the revenue goes back into the business, Martinez said, while the rest goes to him and the company’s 15 contract employees.

Martinez amassed a sizable fortune over time, and after retiring, he founded Blake’s Breaks. He already has locations in Miami and Denver, and he soon plans to build a third in New Jersey.

Martinez aspires to attain $10 million in yearly income and integrate the selling of comic books as a first step before adding to his catalogue all sorts of goods offered on the Whatnot platform. He wants to create two additional stores in Canada and the UK.

The native of Arizona achieved success on the field, sharing the league lead in tackles with the Green Bay Packers in 2017. Martinez, a Stanford graduate who was selected in the fourth round in 2016, played with Green Bay for four seasons before joining the Giants ahead of the 2020 campaign. Martinez missed the most of 2021 due to an ACL injury.

“I think there’s more to my success than [my name],” Martinez told CNBC Make It.

“I used to be like the quarterback of the defense, I was calling plays. When I started this business, it felt like running a team again.

“Every single day when I wake up, my shoulder doesn’t hurt and my back doesn’t hurt anymore.

“When all that hurts are my fingers from opening, like, 1,000 packs of cards per day, I think, ‘I’m going to keep doing this.'”

In the last seven months, he has reportedly generated more than $5 million in revenue through the collectibles resale platform Whatnot.

FOR MORE NFL UPDATES- 

Daniel Snyder Not Ready To Sell Commanders To Jeff Bezos: Is There A Beef?