NFL Pro Retires After Selling Over $650,000 Pokemon Card

Playing in the NFL is tough, and many players leave the NFL because of late-career injuries or bad seasons. But after seven years in the league, Las Vegas Raiders linebacker Blake Martinez retired midseason for another reason: He’s making enough money off the sale Pokemon Cards – he recently sold a very rare card for almost $700,000 – and no longer needs the income he earns from gambling.

Las Vegas Raiders player Blake Martinez shocked many fans at the time he announced last week that he retired from the NFL at the relatively young age of 28. He was first drafted by the NFL Green Bay Packers in 2016

. After four years at Green Bay, he joined the New York Giants in 2020 before suffering a cruciate ligament rupture in 2021. He was released shortly thereafter and joined the Las Vegas Raiders, where he appears to have done well that season. In his last game before retirement, he accumulated 11 tackles. However sale Pokemon Cards seem to be Martinez’s real passion – not to mention a pretty good source of income for him – and he’s more focused on that now.

As reported by Dexertotwo weeks before announcing his mid-season retirement, the NFL pro sold an extremely rare and valuable Pokemon Illustrator card for a hefty sum. Last month the card was graded a 9.5 Gem Mint quality rating

, making it one of the best examples of this coveted card. On October 29, the card – which Martinez nicknamed “The Swirllustrator” because of two small swirllustrators in the card’s artwork –was sold through Goldin Auctions for a whopping $672,000.

Yes, this is the same type of rare card Logan Paul paid over $5 million for it Earlier this year and wore it around his neck during Wrestlemania in April despite being rated a 10 or perfect quality.

Continue reading: The top 12 most valuable Pokemon maps in history

Still, this is a big sale and hardly the first time Martinez has bought and sold Pokemon

Cards. The former NFL player is a big fan of the cards and has been collecting them for years, although in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, his love of collecting and selling has been reignited. He opens old and new card packs on his Instagram and regularly shares his finds online. In fact, Martinez claims to have found the rare “Swirllustrator” at one of these pack openings. The pro player has too a trading card shopBuy and sell rare cards online.

“I have decided to retire from this career at this point to focus on my family and future passions,” Martinez explained in his retirement post on Instagram. It appears that his “passion” is using the wealth he’s made in the NFL to buy and sell rarities Pokemon Cards. And frankly, I’m happy for the guy. He’s far less likely to suffer a terrible concussion if he buys rare Pikachu cards online.