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Blake Martinez #54 of the New York Giants

Cooper Neill / Getty

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Blake Martinez, a former NFL linebacker, decided to forgo playing football after six years and instead focus on his side hustle. That decision has turned into a full-fledged business with $5 million in revenue in just seven months — and it's something most workers can do on the side too.

Martinez is a reseller of Pokemon cards. He got into the game when he was a kid, and became interested again in 2020 when he discovered social-media influencers were buying and reselling cards in a huge fandom marketplace where they can go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

When he tore his ACL in 2021, he realized he was spending more and more time on his side hustle while rehabbing and didn't bother trying to get signed by a team in 2022. Soon after, he turned his side hustle into a company he called Blake's Breaks and committed to growing the business full time in November. Since then, the former New York Giant has amassed $5 million in revenue with two warehouses and several contract employees, according to CNBC.

Martinez had specialized knowledge of Pokemon and bought his first boxes to resell for $30,000 thanks to the $28 million he made playing for the NFL, but you don't need lots of money to start a reselling side hustle. Start by cleaning out your closet and selling unwanted items on sites like Poshmark, digging up old collectibles in your basement and posting them on Facebook Marketplace, or shopping at thrift stores with reselling in mind.


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Martinez plans to grow Blake's Breaks into a company that makes $25 million in revenue each year by expanding into comic books and other collectibles. But side hustles don't need to turn into a career if the security of a steady paycheck and benefits provided by a day job is too much to give up. A couple of hundred bucks a month in fun money or a few grand for a vacation fund are plenty to make reselling worthwhile. 

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