“Look.”
Malik held up the plate.
Otis glanced.
“Yep.”
“You know it?”
“Yep.”
“What?”
Otis told him.
Malik’s excitement disappeared.
It was one of the most common plates ever used on a popular planter series.
“What?”
Otis smiled.
“You thought it was rare.”
“It doesn’t look like the others.”
“Unusual-looking isn’t rare.”
“I couldn’t find it.”
“You were looking in the wrong manual.”
Malik frowned.
Otis continued.
“Rare means two things.”
He held up one finger.
“Hard to find.”
Second finger.
“And somebody needs it.”
He pointed toward the shelves.
“A part can be one of ten ever made.”
“If nobody owns the machine, it’s interesting iron.”
Malik remembered that.
Rare did not mean strange.
Rare did not mean old.
Rare did not even mean discontinued.
Rare meant supply was low relative to actual demand.
That lesson saved him from pricing mistakes later.
By Thanksgiving, Malik had cataloged more than half the inventory.
Out of approximately nine hundred plates, duplicates were common.
Some numbers appeared forty times.
Others once.
A few plates were too worn to sell.
The cell edges had rounded.
Center holes enlarged.
Some were cracked.
Malik separated those.
Otis found him putting a badly worn plate back on a sale shelf.
“You selling that?”
“It still fits.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Malik looked.
Otis pointed to the cell edge.
“Worn.”
“I know.”
“How bad?”
“Maybe still usable.”
“Maybe is not what a farmer wants during planting.”
Malik moved it to the reject pile.
That created another rule.
Compatibility was not enough.
Condition mattered.
A plate that fit but metered poorly could cost more in lost stand than the part was worth.
Malik began grading.
A — minimal wear, clean, sound.
B — usable wear.
C — display, pattern reference, or emergency only.
Reject — cracked, heavily worn, distorted, unsafe to represent as functional.
Otis made him write condition on every invoice once sales began.
The first sale happened in November.
Harold Voss drove into Bell Repair carrying a cast-iron planter component and a piece of paper.
His International planter was old but mechanically sound.
He had committed part of his acreage to a specialty bean contract for spring.
The seed company recommended a plate size Harold did not have.
The original dealer told him discontinued.
Two salvage yards had nothing.
A newer planter would cost more than he wanted to spend.
Harold placed the paper on Otis’s counter.
“You know anybody with this?”
Otis looked.
Then turned toward the back room.
“Malik.”
Malik came out wiping his hands.
“Check your cards.”
Harold looked confused.
“My what?”
Malik read the number.
Went to the index.
International.
Model.
Bean plates.
He flipped.
There.
Exact casting number.
Quantity: 3.
Shelf C-3.
He walked into the parts room.
Third shelf.
Second stack.
Pulled the plate.
He checked the number again.
Exact match.
Harold stared when Malik placed it on the counter.
“Where’d you get that?”
“Whitford auction.”
“That closing sale?”
“Yes.”
Harold turned the plate over.