By Susan Tallant/editor-in-chief

From angels to Elvis, Hot Wheels to Beanie Babies, Americans love to collect stuff. Crystal collectors will go to great lengths to get that next piece of Waterford or Swarovski. Some accumulate anything Coca-Cola or Barbie.

My husband’s Aunt Vickie collects bears. She probably has more than 5,000 bears around her house including bear dishes, bear pictures, teddy bears, a closet full of bear clothing and a very beary Christmas tree decked out with only bear ornaments.

But when does collecting the possession turn into obsession?

Apartments.com is having a contest to help select America’s most “possession obsessed” renter. Now down to three finalists, one lucky obsessor will win a $20,000 cash prize; the other two will get $500.

The finalists: a guy from Tulsa, Okla., living in his own haunted house full of a scary amount of spooky stuff; a girl from Chicago with a collection of pin-up art sure to please her beau; and an art lover in Boston

obsessed with turning trash into treasure.

I’m now convinced Aunt Vickie has some competition out there.

A few others obsessed with possessions? How about a banana label collector who traveled from Houston to Munich just to meet others possessed, I mean obsessed, with collecting banana labels. Check out her labels, numbering 6,685, at www.beckymartz.com.

There is even a collection of the material that plays an important roll in our lives: toilet paper. The Virtual Toilet Paper Museum, www.nobodys-perfect.com/vtpm, will enlighten the curious.

Moist towelette collector Michael Lewis said true motivation of collecting such oddities is the towels themselves.

“ Each moist towelette is like a work of art. Though working in defined parameters, the designers manage to make each towelette applicable to their customer,” he said, on www.members.aol.com/MoistTwl.

For those with vomit fever, Steven J. Silberberg offers a free starter kit to anyone interested in joining him in collecting barf bags at www.airsicknessbags.com. One comment, from an anonymous viewer on his

Web site, sums up all of this wacky waste of time.

“ I vow to never, ever tell Ask Jeeves that I am bored because sites like this turn up.”