If you're looking for the perfect Valentine's Day gift for your mom, grandma or maybe even your girlfriend or wife, a good way to go is with something that will touch her heart.

Todd Keasler hit a home run with a recent gift he bought for his mother. He wasn't looking to dazzle her with anything glitzy or glamorous. He was just looking for something that would touch her heart.

"More than anything in this world, mother wanted a set of china from her mother's pattern," Keasler said. "She only had one worn bread and butter plate and had spent the past 15 years or longer driving all around town to yard sales and estate sales trying to track down more pieces but could never find any. She had pretty much given up."

The family didn't know the pattern name or manufacturer, which made the search even more difficult.

"I was so busy working, I didn't have time to go around scouring stranger's yards," Keasler said. "I didn't think it was even a possibility anymore, but then I heard about Replacements and thought I'd give them a try."

Keasler sent the plate to Replacements Ltd., the world's largest supplier of old and new china, crystal, silver and collectibles.

"We get about 3,000 requests e-mailed, mailed or faxed to us every week from people like Todd through our free Pattern Identification Service," said Chris Kirkman, Replacements' manager of curating. "Folks send us photographs, sketches and even rubbings of silver and crystal pieces, but we get the quickest results when people e-mail clear photos of both sides of the piece where you can read the backstamp or any other writing on the back."

Many customers actually identify their pieces themselves by looking through more than 750,000 images on the company's Web site www.replacements.com. For the harder to find pieces, Replacements has 20 researchers dedicated to tracking down customer requests.

Rather than pore over thousands of photographs to find a match, the company developed special software to sort through more than 277,000 patterns entered in its massive database.

"We call it OPI, which is short for Optical Pattern Identification," Kirkman said. "We start by entering a number of criteria, which we call 'attributes,' such as the color of the pattern, the shape of the edges, any trim color or design characteristics on the piece. The computer gives us a list of possible matches we can then reference to make sure we've found the exact match."

If researchers don't find a match, they add the image to the company's database and keep looking. Kirkman said the company has identified some patterns as long as 15 years after receiving the initial request.

Keasler didn't have to wait that long. He nearly dropped the phone when Replacements called to tell him they had identified his grandmother's pattern — Hazel, by Scio, which was made in the 1940s. What's more, Replacements had pieces in stock. Keasler bought six place settings for his mother to open Christmas morning.

"At first she was just speechless — in disbelief — then she started hugging the dishes and crying and crying. When I looked around, everyone in the room was in tears," Keasler said. "Mom was so overwhelmed; she said it was like having her own mother with her again."