Former New York Giants linebacker Blake Martinez earned over $5 million in Pokémon cards sales after retiring from the NFL at age 28.
Martinez famously left the NFL in 2022 after tearing his ACL at the end of a six-year professional career where he earned more than $28 million. According to CNBC MAKE IT, Martinez began a side hustle while recovering from his injury during the coronavirus pandemic, leading him to the Pokémon cards trade. Per the report:
He chose the cards, launching his company Blake’s Breaks in July 2022 and committing to it full-time in November. Over the past seven months, it’s brought in more than $5 million in revenue on collectible reselling platform Whatnot, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
A quarter of that revenue gets reinvested back into Blake’s Breaks, Martinez says. The rest is take-home pay for himself and his 15 contract employees.
Martinez acknowledged that his name gave him a minor boost in the card-trading world but did not feel he owed all his success to name recognition.
Blake Martinez, #54 of the New York Giants, walks onto the field against the Washington Football Team before an NFL game at FedExField on September 16, 2021, in Landover, Maryland. (Cooper Neill/Getty Images)
“I think there’s more to my success than [my name],” Martinez said. “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.”
Martinez first collected cards at age six by purchasing them from the local Circle K with his weekly $15 allowance. He collected thousands of cards that he stored in a binder, which his mother gave away years later. In 2020, he entered the card trade after seeing influencers like Logan Paul reselling playing cards. First, Martinez bought some collector’s boxes for $30,000 and grew his repertoire from there. Some cards sold for as low as $5, while one sold for as much as $672,000.
After the Giants released him, Martinez kept the side hustle going as he signed with the Las Vegas Raiders until he eventually just decided to retire.
“Every single day when I wake up, my shoulder doesn’t hurt and my back doesn’t hurt anymore,” Martinez said. “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.’”