Malik felt sick.
“I’m sorry.”
Leonard put them on the counter.
“I drove forty miles for these.”
Malik refunded the purchase price immediately.
Then reached into his own cash box.
“How much gas?”
Leonard looked surprised.
“What?”
“How much did the trip cost?”
“I’m not charging you gas.”
“I sold the wrong part.”
“You're sixteen.”
“That doesn’t make it fit.”
Leonard studied him.
Finally:
“Keep your money.”
Malik nodded.
“I’ll find the right plate.”
“You got one?”
“Not yet.”
That evening, Malik stayed until ten searching manuals.
Otis remained in the office pretending to do paperwork.
Malik found a service bulletin from 1962.
Same planter family.
Different shaft.
Different plate center.
He located the correct number.
He did not own one.
The next morning he called five repair shops.
The fifth had two hanging on a wall.
Malik bought both for $12 plus shipping.
He sold one to Leonard for exactly what it cost him.
Leonard returned the following week.
The plate fit.
He handed Malik twenty dollars.
Malik shook his head.
“I already charged you.”
“This is for finding it.”
“No.”
Leonard placed the bill on the counter.
“Then call it payment for making me believe there are still parts men under seventy.”
Otis laughed from the office.
Malik kept the twenty.
More importantly, he created another card system.
Not just part number.
Production revision.
Center drive.
Thickness.
Physical verification.
When possible, he measured.
He learned that catalogs could be wrong.
Superseded numbers created confusion.
Farmers sometimes remembered model numbers incorrectly.
Equipment could have been modified decades earlier.
So Malik began asking customers to bring the old plate, housing, or measurements whenever possible.
“Fits” became something he tried to prove rather than assume.
By January, approximately eight hundred eighty plates had been identified.
The remainder were obscure.
Some were not seed plates at all.
A handful turned out to be fertilizer-meter components.
Several belonged to garden planters.
Two were parts from a grain drill.
One disc Malik had cataloged for three weeks as an unknown plate was simply a spacer.
Otis recognized it immediately.
Malik threw a rag at him.
“You could’ve said something.”
“You looked happy.”
“You watched me research a spacer.”
“For nine days.”
“That is terrible.”
“You learned.”
Malik could not argue.
Winter gave him time.
Spring would not.
By February 1991, farmers were preparing planters.
Calls increased.
Malik created a handwritten price sheet.
Common plates:
$5–$12.
Less common:
$15–$25.
Scarce, confirmed-demand plates:
priced individually.
He refused to price solely by rarity.
Some hard-to-find plates sat unsold.
Other “common” numbers sold constantly because hundreds of those planters remained in use.
Demand was the other half of value.
Ruth Carter became unexpectedly interested.
One evening, Malik brought the card box home to work at the kitchen table.
His grandmother sat across from him.
“What’s that?”
“Inventory.”
She pulled a card.
“Number 1265.”
“John Deere.”
“What’s it worth?”
“Eight dollars.”
Another.
“Thirty-two nineteen.”
“International.”
“Twenty.”
Another.