Yahoo Sports Daily hosts Caroline Fenton and Coley Harvey interview former NFL linebacker Blake Martinez on his pivot from playing football to collecting and selling Pokemon cards. Watch the full episode of Yahoo Sports Daily on YouTube or YahooSports.TV.
Advertisement
Video Transcript
Nfl player Blake Martinez sold one of the most valuable Pokemon cards at an auction for nearly $700,000.
My goodness, I should’ve been collecting Pokemon cards for a long, long time now.
But if you don’t know this story by now, we’re about to catch you up, because former NFLer Blake Martinez knows a thing or two, or a, a million things about selling rare Pokemon cards.
Welcome into the show, Blake.
Thank you so much for being with here, us, here with us today.
Usually would’ve started on, you know, the latest with the Packers, your former NFL team.
Maybe we would’ve talked about Stanford, your college team.
Advertisement
Normally here on Yahoo Sports Daily we would talk about sports, but not today.
I have to ask about the Pokemon card.
where did this start?
How did this happen?
Tell me everything.
Yeah, I mean, if you want me to talk Pokemon, I can go for, like, nine years.
but, basically I got, reached out by Mike Kafka actually.
he was offensive coordinator at the Giants.
He was super heavily into Pokemon cards at the time.
and so he was like, “Hey, Blake, I got this card.”
Guy reached out to me about it, the card that you’re seeing on the screen right now, and he basically got me connected with the guy.
Next thing you know, I’m buying this card for a lot of money, and I’m FedExing it through to me from Japan to the US, and that was probably the scariest, like, three weeks of my life.
Advertisement
ended up coming back, grading really highly, and then as you can see, sold it for a lot of money.
It was, it was a great day, great day.
Wow, how about that?
A Stanford guy and a Northwestern guy, Mike Kafka linking up there.
Yeah.
I like that.
I’m a Northwestern guy myself, so that’s why I like that.
But when you initially decided to retire from football, Blake, what was the driving factor behind that decision?
Was it football related, or was it something with Pokemon where you saw, “Hey, maybe this business could be kinda lucrative”?
Yeah, there was a lot of factors there.
I know everybody loved the headline of Blake retired from NFL to do Pokemon cards, all that kinda stuff.
Advertisement
but at the time I just came off an ACL injury, and at that given point I was like, “Okay, I’m either starting from ground zero again in football, or I can kinda do this side passion that I love,” which is Blake’s Breaks, Pokemon, everything.
And so dove back and kinda sat back, talked to my wife, talked to my family, and it just made the best decision for me, mentally, after obviously hurting my knee, and chose to pursue another passion.