When he buys larger works, the price sets him back. Like the untitled sculpture by Miami artist Loriel Beltran. Roth purchased the piece from Wynwood's Fredric Snitzer Gallery. He won't divulge what it cost but admits that he was able to acquire it only because Snitzer offered him a payment plan.

''It's a choice you're making when you buy art. Instead of going on another trip or buying a nicer car or more clothes, this is what I do,'' Roth says, walking over to a Kehinde Wiley portrait in his dining room.

''My first real discovery,'' he says with a satisfied smile. ``I bought it at the second Basel. He recently had a big show at the Brooklyn Museum. He has had big paintings go for $200,000. But I don't buy art as an investment. I buy it to connect with it. I mean, if it appreciates, that's great, too.''

Apfel says she bought a work by New York artist Lisa Sigal, who often works with construction materials, at the Basel satellite Scope fair before knowing much about her.

``Sometimes you just sense the artist. Later, when you learn more about them, you realize how many connections you have to them. It's a ride. It's very intense. I liked this piece because it had a painterly quality even though it was a paper construction. How . . . did I know that she was going to wind up in the Whitney Biennial later?''

ART COMES FIRST

Apfel has limited resources but will buy art before she'll spend on designer labels or status-symbol wheels. She has one small steel sculpture that she'll be paying off for almost the rest of her life. She got to know the artist over a couple of Basels, and he told her to take the piece and pay him $100 a month.

''Collecting art has been overwhelmingly emotional,'' she says. ``It's helped awaken a part of me. Most people don't know this, but I spent most of my life in an art classroom before I started doing legal stuff.''

This Basel, given the uncertain economy, Apfel says she'll be looking, not buying. ''I'm just going to have to be practical,'' she says. ``Each year, I budget for Basel, but I didn't this time. . . . I'm worried about what may happen in the next couple of years.''

Says Roth: 'I scheduled a trip to L.A. during Basel this year. On purpose. I was looking at the calendar, and I said to the people I was supposed to meet, `How's Dec. 5?' I'll be out of here, so I'm not tempted.''

New art collectors tend to describe their passion in dangerous terms -- as ''a narcotic,'' ''a disease,'' ''an addiction.'' Even artists suffer.

''We want to possess objects of beauty,'' says longtime Miami artist Carlos Betancourt, who turned up for the not-for-profit Locust Project's recent ''Smash & Grab'' raffle with a short list of the Miami artists whose work he planned to vie for when his number was called.

''My own work deals with collecting, cataloging, documenting,'' Betancourt says. ``It is something ingrained in our species. If you collect something, you are paralleling your own existence, you are documenting what is going on around you.''

Betancourt and several other local artists say their South Florida collector base has multiplied since Basel came to town.

''It's interesting to see how many more people are coming to the shows,'' says Pablo Cano, who for 11 years has created theater pieces featuring found-object marionettes for North Miami's Museum of Contemporary Art and during Basel will show his work at the Green Art Fair in Midtown Miami for artists who reuse/recycle materials.

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