CANFIELD — Old timey music played over the public address system as shoppers came from across the region to attend the annual Hudson Antique Show at the Canfield Fairgrounds on Saturday.

The show continues 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. today at the Event Center at the fairgrounds. Dealers traveled from as far south as Kentucky and as far north as Maine.

“Everyone here gets along with each other,” said Derik Pulito, who traveled all the way from Kensington, Connecticut in what he describes as “a fast eight hours” on Interstate 80.

“The dealers are really amicable,” Pulito said, “and we all go out to dinner together and everything, so it’s a wonderful weekend once a year.”

Pulito has been dealing in 18th century and early 19th century furniture and paintings for 40 years. Like most of the dealers in the show, he is a professional antique dealer who sidelights in other industries — fine art painting and mason work in his case.

And like most antique dealers, he found his calling almost by happenstance. His parents were antique hunters who frequented auctions and, as a youngster, Pulito started to restore the furniture they found.

“So, I started going to auctions,” he said, “and there you go.”

Other dealers came from New York, Michigan, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Missouri, Vermont, Maryland and Iowa. Of course, Pennsylvania and Ohio also were well represented.

In all, 50 antiques dealers were in attendance.

Most were professional dealers, although a number were retirees enjoying their golden years by indulging in their passion for antiques.

Jim and Diane Farr are retired Penn State professors who traveled from Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, to take part in the Hudson Show. They have done the show “six or seven times” and always found it fun and interesting, they said.

“We have been in antiques since the early 1970s and we love it,” Diane said.

“We love living with it (in their house),” she said. “We love researching and learning about particular artists. The provenance of the piece is very important and learning about it is very stimulating mentally.”

Among the rare antiques the Farrs displayed were three handcrafted pewter lamps that burned either camphene (a purified form of turpentine) or whale oil. One sported a large convex crystal lens that focused the illumination from an open flame like a spotlight.

“It was used by lacemakers,” Diane said, “so they could do their intricate work in the dark.”

The couple began antiquing when they were first married and looking for furniture for their first home together. They began going to country auctions and, like so many at the show, discovered a passion for the rare and beautiful items of yesteryear.

“But then your house gets full,” Jim said, “so you start buying ‘smalls,'” or everyday household items.

What might seem like a market for trivialities is actually big business.

By some estimates, antiques are a $10 billion a year industry in the United States.

“COVID drove the market to the Internet,” Duane Watson, a retired professor of Biblical studies from Ashland said. “Then when it came back, the antique business doubled overnight.”

Watson is the sole proprietor of Doc’s Crocks, a dealership for antique crockery. His most expensive crock was made in 1884 and used for storing meat. The asking price for this elderly piece of pottery was $4,800.

Not everyone was looking for the big-ticket items, however.

Jane and Phil Webb drove from Delaware, Ohio to look for mechanical toy banks.

“We weren’t buying (mechanical toy) banks at first, they were too expensive,” Phil said. But then they came upon a German bank shaped like a beetle. “And its wings flap and its legs move,” Phil said. “It’s a windup from the 1890s.” A passion was born.

Mechanical banks were a novelty item manufactured in Germany in the late 1900s. “So they’re all pretty old,” Phil said, “and to find one that works and has good paint left has a lot of value.”

Part of the reason the Webbs buy antiques is to learn about them, a theme repeated by many customers at the show.

Needless to say, an antique mall is full of history.

Mike Gallant traveled from Bangor, Maine, with his assortment of odd collectables, including African masks, giant marbles and a half-dozen “Ugly Face Jugs,” a style of pottery that by some accounts originated with slaves in the southern states. Each pot is adorned with a grotesquely grimacing face.

“It’s to keep somebody out of your whiskey,” he said.

Sometimes this history is very personal.

Bob Zollinhoffer from Medina, is from a family of dealers. This year he is selling a collection of his late sister — an antiques auctioneer who died near the end of the COVID pandemic.

Zollinhoffer tended to his sister while she was ill and is selling off the collection in her name.

Often antiques are a personal matter for dealers and buyers alike.

“When you love something like antiques you can pass it on to someone else,” Gallant said.