Raiders LB Blake Martinez Auctions Rare Pokémon Card For Over Half Of His NFL Salary

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It’s been a couple of years since the NFT Bubble rapidly expanded before bursting in spectacular (and incredibly predictable) fashion, and while the digital “assets” with virtually no intrinsic value somehow didn’t turn out to be the wisest investment on the planet, the same can’t be said for their more tangible counterparts.

When I was growing up, it was rare for a single Christmas gathering to go by without at least one of my uncles reminding my grandparents about the time they decided to throw away the baseball cards they amassed in the 1960s and ’70s after they left for college, and I know I’m far from the only millennial who regrets not hanging onto the sizeable collection of Pokémon cards I amassed during my elementary and middle school years.

If you had the foresight to both hang onto and take care of those particular collectibles, there’s a chance you could be sitting on a goldmine based on the staggering prices rare Pokémon cards are routinely able to fetch at auction.

Last year, Logan Paul became the proud new owner of a mint condition Pikachu Illustrator card valued at a cool $5,275,000, and while an NFL player who recently auctioned off the same one didn’t get that kind of windfall, he still did pretty damn good for himself.

Las Vegas Raiders linebacker Blake Martinez sold a rare Pokémon card for $672,000 at auction

If you’re not familiar with the card in question, the Pikachu Illustrator is considered the rarest Pokémon card on the planet;  it was produced for a contest run by the Japanese magazine CoroCoro Comics in the late 1990s, and experts believe there are currently a total of just over 40 in the entire world.

Paul’s record-setting card is valued as high as it is because it received a perfect PSA Grade of 10, which is a few steps above the 9.5 the card that ended up in the possession of Raiders LB Blake Martinez received when it was graded before hitting the auction block last month.

Martinez speculated the card could sell for anywhere between $500,000 and $1.5 million when he chatted with The Las Vegas Review-Journal last week.

His conservative estimate ended up being a bit more accurate, but he was still able to pocket a solid chunk of change after it changed hands for a grand total of $672,000 (the final bid was for $560,000, but the new owner was also charged a $112,000 buyer’s premium).

It’s not entirely clear how much Martinez paid to get the card in the first place, but when you consider it sold for over half of his current $1.2 million NFL salary, it’s safe to assume he’s pretty pleased.