Dan Dearing seemingly leaves nothing to chance and always has a game plan. When you juggle as many duties as Dearing, goal-setting becomes a necessity.

In Dearing’s case, he achieves them almost as quickly as he sets them.

Case in point: in a little more than six months as a seller on COMC, ddearing has eclipsed $100,000 in terms of the total book value of his listed cards. That puts him in rare company, as only eight others have reached the mark.

The journey started last August, when Dearing learned of COMC (through a mention on Blowoutcards.com). He immediately spent — get this — “three to four hours that night on the site, reading through the entire history of blog posts in order to learn about the legitamacy of the company.”

Once he was content in his findings, Dearing actually made this 100K barrier a target. He officially became a seller a month later … and the rest is history.

“I just realized that for $400 in monthly rental fees (Dearing has approximately 40,000 cards listed), I could save a lot of time not having to drive to shows and pay the table fees — which all of that would total about $400 anyway,” said the Jacksonville resident. “This way, I get to spend way more time with my wife and son, and I sell as much a month on the site as I probably would at the shows.”

Doing shows has become second-nature for Dearing, who made his debut as a seller in the fifth grade. His father would handle the supply and table fees, with the understanding that Dearing would have to learn how to keep records of his sales. This essentially taught Dearing the practice of bookkeeping.

Twenty-two years later, Dearing is the owner and president of a financial services company.

“I would split the profits with my dad, and I remember thinking that $300 is a lot for a kid my age,” Dearing recalls.

Dearing did shows through high school, where he was a multi-sport letterwinner for prestigous The Bolles School, ranked in 2005 by Sports Illustrated as having one of the top 10 athletic programs in the country.

From there, Dearing played football and competed in track and field (where he even raced against Randy Moss in the 200 meters at the Southern Conference championships) at Davidson College in Charlotte, N.C.  After two seasons, he transferred to SEC track power Florida and competed in the decathlon.

Dearing, a Gator season-ticket holder, has continued his love for the sport as Bolles’ track and field coach. He also has carried out a childhood pursuit of Andre Dawson cards. But in typical Dearing fashion, the itensity is full throttle: Dearing only buys serial-numbered Dawson jersey cards that are numbered the same as Dawson’s jersey number (8).

“I probably have about 150 to 200 of just those,” said Dearing, laughing. “I doubt there’s a lot of collections like that out there.”

Probably not. Nor are there a lot of more successful COMC sellers than Dearing either.