She stands just off the dining room of Alicia Hancock Apfel's Upper East Side house. The Little Red Girl by A-list sculptor William King is a kindred soul and a testament to Apfel's longtime affinity for art collecting.

The passion started to simmer when Apfel was about 10. She became so enamored of King's playful red vinyl sculpture when she spotted it in a Bal Harbour gallery that her parents bought it for her as a surprise. But things really boiled over after Art Basel Miami Beach, the largest contemporary art fair in the country, put down stakes in 2002.

''I remember when you had to leave Miami to see great art,'' says Apfel, 44, a lawyer whose 1938 three-bedroom is filled with vintage touches and, for the last few years, more and more artworks to keep her and The Little Red Girl company.

``All of a sudden, we get Basel, and we have everything from everywhere coming to Miami once a year.''

In recent years, many young and not so young locals who lack deep pockets have caught the art-collecting bug. They will never compete with big-league South Florida collectors such as the Rubell family, Norman Braman, Martin Margulies or Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz and must make sacrifices to buy even at the entry price of $1,000 to $5,000. But they are equally committed to the hunt.

Blame the craze on South Florida's growing art scene, on the fact that multiplying numbers of homegrown artists not only are selling well in other markets but also have become recognizable stars within this community, and also on Art Basel and all those satellite fairs (almost two dozen this year) that turn a few days in early December into dazzling visual overload.

In less than a decade, Basel and South Florida's thriving galleries and maturing museums have not just provided an education in contemporary art but also have fostered an infectious craving to have it and hold it and live with it year-round.

Many starry-eyed new collectors say there is more to their passion than its investment potential.

''Today I'm standing in a house full of art,'' says Alan Roth, 33, publisher of 944 Magazine and president of TAI Entertainment, a party promoting and marketing company. ``I can't believe I have all this work.''

FIRST ACQUISITION

When Art Basel kicked off seven years ago, Roth walked into the Miami Beach Convention Center and walked out with his first acquisition, a Mitsy Groenendijk sculpture of a monkey with chalk in its hand and the word ''Share'' on the wall behind it.

About that time, Roth's former girlfriend was a curator trying to help develop the careers of a couple of local artists, including Buenos Aires-born Martin Oppel, whose work has commented on Miami's building boom.

Oppel's career keeps climbing, and Roth owns one of his works -- but not the one he originally wanted.

''My girlfriend was holding a piece of his, and I fell in love with it. But she wouldn't sell it to me. She was trying to help him, and she wanted to sell it to a real collector. At the time, I only owned the monkey,'' says Roth, who lives off Biscayne Boulevard.

The ex would probably take Roth's interest in art more seriously today. Among the hot local artists on his walls: Hernan Bas, Naomi Fisher, Bhakti Baxter, Luis Gispert, Purvis Young. There are also noted nonlocals such as painter Claire Sherman and photographers Massimo Vitali and Pieter Hugo.

Roth, who makes a decent living and owns a comfortable but unflashy house, hardly fits the image of the wealthy art collector.

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