These Maine card collectors have found their grail
Jimmy Haight and Sean Roche have formed a new sports collectibles business designed to match buyers looking for specific cards with willing sellers. Haight holds up a Bronko Nagurski card. (Derek Davis/Staff Photographer)
Five months ago, two friends with a shared entrepreneurial spirit decided to form a new type of sports card collecting company.
On Wednesday at a national sports card show, Sean Roche of Wells and Jimmy Haight of Kennebunk plan to unveil a card that proves their new approach of matching sellers of valuable trading cards and with preapproved buyers can produce rarities — known as “grails” in the collector’s world.
Their company, called Yabe Inc., has acquired one of eight known and graded Rocky Graziano boxing cards to complete a task regarded by collectors as basically impossible: Gathering all 50 cards in the 1948 Leaf Boxing set. They will show the Graziano card at the National Sports Collectors Convention in Rosemont, Illinois, which runs Wednesday through Saturday.
Working for a client, Roche and Haight got the deal done. Roche flew to Oregon this week to acquire the Graziano card for an undisclosed price.
Jimmy Haight (pictured) and Sean Roche have formed a new sports collectibles business designed to match buyers looking for specific cards with willing sellers. They have helped one collector complete a rare 1948 boxing set with one of eight known-to-exist Rocky Graziano cards that is expected to sell for over million. (Staff photo by Derek Davis/Staff Photographer) Purchase this image
Their Graziano card is one of the three highest-graded cards in existence, according to Professional Sports Authenticator, grading out at 5 on a scale of 10. A Graziano PSA 5 card sold for $188,000 in May at an auction. Roche and Haight say their card, while rated the same, is a clearer image and could be worth over $300,000.
In addition to finding the Graziano card, Yabe Inc. also was able to secure highly graded cards for many of the other boxers in the 1948 set. They believe their client now has the highest-graded overall set and that the set’s value is over $1 million.
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“The Rocky (card) is scarce, and when you assemble this whole set and talk about it being the top-graded registered set, you’re easily talking seven figures,” Roche said.
NEW BUSINESS IDEA
Haight, 36, and Roche, 31, are both married with two children. They met about five years ago. Haight was working for a leading crypto currency transaction company he helped co-found, and Roche was an accountant.
Roche brings experience in sports collectibles. The son of Wells High football coach Tim Roche, Sean Roche (Wells High class of 2013) got his start as a kid collecting the autographs of famous athletes. He co-founded a sports memorabilia company called Coastal Rips in 2024.
Haight had little experience in collectibles, but he always has been business minded. Growing up in Dover, New Hampshire, he was a paper boy, delivering the Foster’s Daily Democrat**.** More recently, he co-founded Nexus Maine, a social chat and collaboration site for Maine-based entrepreneurs.
Haight says he and Roche were spending a relaxing Labor Day weekend at Roche’s beach house last year when he threw out an idea he’d been formulating. Haight believed a marketplace that starts with a potential buyer listing his top price for a product — a “bounty,” as Haight called it — could be more efficient.
“I asked Sean, ‘could this bounty-style market place work for collectibles?'” Haight recalled. Roche said yes.
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“I’ve been doing buying and selling of collectibles for four or five years. It’s always been a side passion, and I was always looking for a way to find stuff quicker,” Roche said.
Yabe was soon formed. The name is both a Japanese slang for “cool,” and eBay spelled backward.
Yabe’s methodology encourages owners to bring their collectibles to market because they can see in real time that there’s a buyer out there willing to pay a fair price — and Yabe has done the background work to verify the buyer’s credibility. Yabe makes its money on commissions and finder’s fees. The company doesn’t have a physical storefront or inventory.
Haight stresses that their percentages are less than competitors like eBay and auction houses, particularly the later that will take a 15-18% cut from the seller and then often charge an additional 20-22% above the sale price as a buyer’s premium.
“What we’ve learned is that most collectors are both buyers and sellers, and on both sides they are underserved,” Haight said.
Haight has made the full-time switch to being a self-employed co-owner of Yabe. Roche is still working as a senior accountant for a large Maine-based company.
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MAKING IT WORK
Proof of concept first happened in a big way when Yabe acquired multiple 1935 Bronko Nagurski football cards produced by the National Chicle gum company. The Nagurskis are both rare and valuable. Yabe brokered a sale for a PSA 2 rated Nagurski (on a scale of 10) for a record-setting $60,000.
Jimmy Haight, left, of Kennebunk and Sean Roche of Wells have joined forces to become a force in the sports card collectible arena with their new company, Yabe Inc. (Courtesy Jimmy Haight)
They were also able to locate one of the very first football cards ever produced, by Goodwin Champions in 1888 of Yale star Harry Beecher.
“We found that we are quite good at finding vintage football cards, especially pre-World War II cards,” Roche said.
Putting together the complete high-grade Leaf Boxing set brought the business to a whole new level.
“The collector, and he would prefer that everything remain anonymous, had a couple of the cards but nothing crazy. Some very low-grade stuff. There was a lot of upgrading and filling in gaps,” Roche said.
Graziano was the key card. Known as an elite knockout artist, Graziano went 67-10-6 and was middleweight champion in 1947 and 1948. Outside of the ring, he was an actor and prominent television pitchman for products like Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots and Wishbone salad dressing. His back story, which includes going AWOL from the Army, serving time in juvenile detention homes, and having his autobiography made into a 1956 movie starring Paul Newman, make Graziano an interesting figure.
But it’s the rarity of the card — attributed most commonly to Graziano demanding it be pulled from distribution because of a compensation dispute — that makes the Graziano a true grail for collectors.
Roche and Haight said what they accomplished went beyond finding the card. They were also able to complete the transaction.
“We look in physical spaces, we look online, we look everywhere. We were able to find this card and get a deal done,” Roche said. “We weren’t a buyer or a seller. We’re just helping make the match.”
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Tagged: boxing
Steve Craig reports primarily about Maine’s active high school sports scene and, more recently, the Portland Hearts of Pine men's professional soccer team. His first newspaper job was covering Maine. More by Steve Craig
