Cell size.
Condition.
Quantity.
Shelf.
He created a separate section for unidentified pieces.
Another for cracked or questionable stock that should not be sold without inspection.
Bell watched him work one evening.
“You're getting complicated.”
“People call by different information.”
“How?”
“Some know the casting number.”
Malik held up one card.
“Some only know planter model.”
Another.
“Some know crop and plate pattern.”
Bell nodded.
“So?”
“So the catalog has to let me reach the answer from different directions.”
Bell smiled.
“You know what that is?”
“What?”
“Parts department.”
Malik looked around the back room.
“Small one.”
“Still counts.”
By January, Malik had identified more than seven hundred plates.
A large majority were common.
That disappointed him initially.
Many were worth five dollars.
Some ten.
A few were so widely available that farmers could find them in barns without calling him.
But perhaps sixty or seventy plates appeared much harder to replace.
Obsolete.
Low surviving supply.
Still connected to planter models farms continued using.
Malik marked those cards with a small red dot.
Not because they automatically deserved a high price.
Because they required more research before selling.
Bell approved.
“Don't sell your last one cheap if you can't replace it.”
“Charge whatever people will pay?”
Bell’s expression hardened.
“No.”
Malik looked up.
“Then what?”
“Fair price.”
“How do I know?”
“You'll learn.”
Bell sat beside the catalog.
“A man needs a forty-dollar plate to keep a paid-for planter working. You don't charge him four hundred because you're the only one with it.”
“Why not?”
“Because next year he remembers.”
Malik listened.
“And so does his neighbor.”
Bell pointed toward the telephone.
“You want one good sale or a business?”
Malik understood.
“Business.”
“Then leave enough value on his side of the counter that he wants to come back.”
Malik never forgot that.
His prices developed gradually.
Common plates:
Five to ten dollars.
Better obsolete plates:
Fifteen to twenty-five.
Harder numbers:
Thirty.
Forty.
Occasionally more when replacement availability was nearly nonexistent and condition excellent.
One plate sold for sixty dollars.
Malik stared at the cash after the farmer left.
His grandmother asked that evening:
“How many pieces of rust did you sell today?”
“One.”
“How much?”
“Sixty.”
His mother looked up immediately.
“Sixty dollars?”
“Yes.”
“For one?”
“Yes.”
His grandmother smiled.
“One of the nine hundred?”
“Yes.”
She nodded.
“Then maybe the rust was hiding something.”
Malik's mother was still cautious.
“How much have you made total?”
Malik had records.
“Three hundred eighty-five gross.”
“And how much spent?”
“One eighty original. About forty-one cleaning supplies, postage, copies, long-distance calls.”
“Your time?”
Malik smiled.
“Mr. Bell asks that too.”
“Because Mr. Bell has sense.”
She looked at him.
“You saving any?”