"That's what [this business] is all about," says Chappel, whose shop sports a sign that states: "The toys your mother threw away."

Chappel was one of 45 antique dealers at the Davis Fairpark in Farmington for a recent show that was promoted by antique dealers Rick and Gretchen Thiessens.

"It's always a treasure hunt," antiques dealer Gretchen Thiessens says about the career she and her husband, Rick, have enjoyed the past 16 years.

Pirates once perused the "X" on the map that marked the spot. Miners in the Old West panned for gold. Others have combed the ground with metal detectors. And now, thanks to the hit PBS TV series "Antiques Roadshow," people are scouring estate sales, thrift shops and their own attics and basements looking for that next great find or personal memory.

Roselee Seay and her 9-year-old granddaughter, Sarah Webster, traveled from American Fork to attend the Davis County show.

"I just like looking at all this stuff," Seay says. "You can look at it on eBay, you can look at it in books, but it's not the same. This is my childhood stuff. It's the homes and atmosphere I grew up with."

Gloria Chappel has been at her Sugar House location, 1054 E. 2100 South, for more than 20 years. She got into the business, in part, because her mother took her around to thrift stores as a child. When Chappel looked for business opportunities as an adult, it was natural for her to open her own antique store.

Now, she specializes in toys and jewelry but carries a variety of items, including kitchen glassware from the '50s and '60s that won't find their way into an auction record books, but which just might find their way into someone's heart or daily life.

The Thiessens have observed a similar phenomenon in that more people are now collecting antiques to use rather than stashing them away or displaying them in cabinets behind glass doors.

"People [new to the antique business] are not collecting them, but living with them," Gretchen Thiessens says. "They want things they can live with, things that they like, that they can appreciate."

Gloria Chappel has seen it all during her decades in the business, everything from finding a piece of Kay Finch pottery that she bought for 50 cents and later sold for $850 to the customer with an unusual fascination with yearbooks.

The man, Chappel says, frequented her shop often looking for yearbooks from high schools across Utah. She found this rather odd, especially since he was buying books from schools he had not attended. Chappel later learned that the man read through the newspaper obituaries each day and tried to find earlier photos of the deceased in one of the many yearbooks in his collection.

While most of her customers' requests are more mainstream, Chappel says that her line of work is never boring.

"It's interesting to see what people collect," she says. "We're always getting surprised. That's one of the things that attracts me - how everyone is so different."