If im not mistaken Blake Martinez was not a real household name in terms of football talent. I think more people in pokemon know him than people in football circles. It takes a lot of talent to reach the NFL, dont get me wrong, but i dont think its him retiring so much as it is that he isnt getting a contract extension. The sale is equivalent to like 2 years of NFL base salary for veterans, so i dont think he would make this sale and call that alone retirement money, but if hes been saving and investing a good chunk of his previous contracts he will be sitting pretty good.
Rare? LOL this isn’t rare at all, these sell for $2 at AliExpress!
/s
…but in all seriousness, that’s one fine looking illustrator Pikachu.
Everyone makes a big deal about his sale price, not realizing his actual profit is much less considering he paid $400k~ for the raw card? Only a $250k~ profit before taxes, definitely not enough to retire off of.
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Dont think he paid that much for the pack. 
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19.4m definitely should be more than enough to retire on, but lifestyle creep is a very real concern. People get accustomed to a certain income, and then suddenly their retirement nest egg needs to be that much higher to sustain it. The bar just keeps going up for some people.
I remember one of the very successful guys in the Pokémon TCG community was interviewed on someone else’s YouTube channel a couple years ago. I won’t mention names (they rarely post here anyway though). The question of cashing out and retiring came up. I remember them saying even 20 million dollars might not be enough for them to feel comfortable retiring at such a young age. They said something like “you never know about future medical expenses”.
I almost couldn’t believe my ears. 20 million dollars would be more than enough to sustain a cushy Upper Middle Class lifestyle for a whole family, for several decades. Anyone who feels uneasy about that is detached from reality. Private insurance isn’t that expensive either.
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Obvious bait. Guy with a 7 figure net worth isn’t magically retiring because he added a couple hundred k to that. Good on him for the profit, though. I’ve seen this with high net people before; where once you hit a certain level almost everything becomes fair game to try and arbitrage.
I think he has another copy if I’m not mistaken. Someone may have mentioned that in another thread. He probably just had fun selling the card! If most of us had that nfl bankroll we would probably be doing stuff like this! 
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My Greninja GS pile would be higher than Mt Fuji
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Another perspective is the Raiders (the team he was traded to a few weeks ago) are having rough season. There’s talk their new coach, Josh McDaniels, isn’t the easiest guy to be around. He played one game for the Raiders after being traded, and had a team high 11 tackles. For someone who can do whatever they want, he may have not wanted to take a scolding from JM or go through the rest of the season as a losing team (Raiders suck, Giants could make the playoffs).
This is just speculation. Once he secured “the bag” with his Giants contract, he can really do whatever he wants in life. I’d frown upon a mid-season retirement strictly due to commitment. If you commit to something, do it. Otherwise, don’t commit. Although, I have no issues with walking away because of JM due to all the rumors going around. Nobody wants to be degraded by a tyrant - again all speculation.
Pokemon is a nice touch to get more views and media attention. My 2 cents.
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Moral of the story: the Raiders suck so bad it’s worth selling grail cards to abandon them
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Buy up the cheapest booster box pokemon set. Then start the rumour mill about pulling an illustrator from a pack. Retirement sorted.