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Blake Martinez is a real life Pokemon trainer
If football ends for Raiders linebacker Blake Martinez, he’s got another career already plotted out for him.
According to the New York Post, Martinez sold one of his Pokemon cards for $672K over the weekend at an auction. If you’re wondering who would buy a Pokemon card for $672K, yes I would if I had money like that.
It wasn’t just your run of the mill Snorlax, either. This was a 1998 Pokemon Illustrator Pikachu card that is one of the rarest Pokemon cards known in existence. The Illustrator Pikachu card was estimated to be worth $1.5 million, and the Goldin Auction House rated the card as a 9.5 on their scale, making it one of the higher quality cards they’ve seen.
Last year, ESPN reported that Martinez has been an avid Pokemon card collector since he was a child, and talked about Pokemon with Giants DL Leonard Williams.
It gets better from there.
40,000 Pokemon cards is simply the coolest thing an NFL player has said or done since Jamaal Williams talked about anime on Good Morning Football. NFL players being huge nerds will never not be awesome to me (also a huge nerd). Eventually, diving deep into sports’ nerdom will get done.
Now I have hundreds of questions I want to ask Martinez. What’s his starter Pokemon? Which Pokemon game is his favorite? Why is Incineroar the best Pokemon ever? Have you really played and beaten every Pokemon game ever released since you were six? Because if he has, please teach me your ways.
Martinez currently owns a business that sells some of the 40,000 Pokemon cards that he owns, and according to The Athletic’s Vic Tafur, he’s made $2 million in the last four months. That’s a prospering business if I ever heard of one.
Martinez doesn’t say if he’s a buyer of Pokemon cards either, but I wouldn’t put it past him. He says his goal is to obtain every Pokemon card ever made and could want to open up his own Pokemon shop himself.
