More than 40% of U.S. households have collectors in them — but what happens when you live in an apartment? Does that make for a household with more than the house can hold?

Well, maybe not literally, but living in an apartment can make for more challenging collecting.

Apartment dwelling collectors likely need to be more creative with storing and displaying their goodies, fitting their growing collections in a smaller space. They must have a sense of humor about articles which tell them to keep those horizontal surfaces clean to create the illusion of larger space too.

And the folks at Apartments.com are counting on it.

With their first-ever Possession Obsession Contest, Apartments.com is not only asking folks who live in a rental apartment to show off what they’ve got (allowing the rest of us to rubber-neck and enjoy the videos), but they’re going to give away large sums of money to the folks who show off their smaller abodes loaded with collectibles.

Just how much money? Well, one lucky Grand Prize winner will receive $20,000 in cash and the two runner-up finalists will each receive a cash prize of $500.

To enter, each contestant should send in a one-to two-minute video that shows their “Possession Obsession.” Each entry should include how their collection began, reveal ways the collection has come to life in their apartment, and illustrate the funniest situations brought about by the collection.

Your video:

* May not include footage of any person other than you;

* Must include footage of you;

* Must include a statement within the first 20 seconds stating that the video is being submitted for the Apartments.com Possession Obsession Contest;

* May not include unsuitable or offensive content;

* May not contain content that is in violation of or infringes third party intellectual property rights including, but not limited to copyrights, including music copyrights, trademarks, and rights of publicity; and

* May not contain content to which you do not own all right, title and interest.

Collectors can submit videos online through September 10 on the contest Web site.

Then a team of judges selected by and including experts from Apartments.com will select three potential finalists based on the originality of expression based on the following criteria:

(10%) how your obsession began
(30%) how your possessions/collection are taking over your apartment
(30%) how extreme your obsession is
and (30%) the funniest experiences you’ve had because of your possession obsession.

Between September 17 and October 19, the finalists will be posted to the contest Web site where the general public can view the submissions and vote for who they think should win the Grand Prize.

The finalists will also have the opportunity to be featured here at CQ — so it’s really fame & fortune that awaits you. But you’ve got to enter to win. So, if you live in a rental apartment, what are you waiting for? Cash, our admiration, and a few shared giggles await!

To enter the contest or for more information and statistics about America’s possession obsessions, as well as the official contest rules and guidelines, visit www.apartments.com/possessionobsession.

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Awhile ago I mentioned the fabulous The Next Big Thing contest at FredFlare.com. Because I’m very smitten with this contest, I stopped in to see the 27 lucky submissions selected from thousands for the shop this year — and to decide which one I could vote to give the $1000 prize to.

As to be expected from Fred Flare there are many adorable things to wear, including, for you cephalopod collectors, these playful octopus pins by Nut and Bee.

Celebrity designers include Project Runway champ Jay McCarroll and Jennifer Danielle Perkins of the Naughty Secretary Club and Craft Lab on the DIY Network. And while cuteness abounds in this year’s array of goodies there are a few clever ideas too, like this Baker’s Edge brownie pan which allows everyone who loves the crispy, chewy brownies on the edge of the pan to get their fill.

I don’t even like the brownies on the edge of the pan, but I’ve seen enough fights break-out over these few edge pieces to know this is an excellent idea. I was almost ready to give it my Fred Fan Fave vote when this description of a short film by Candy Eye Factory caught my eye:

In it, 3 chic heroines marvel at the 1980s biggest fashion hits & misses in a scheme to sell vintage clothing to style-starved teens!

I just had to see it.

Just 13 minutes long, The Mallorys Go Black Market DVD is pure perfection.

The premise is simple: Three girls join forces to make some fast money by selling retro fashions on the Russian black market. Their goal: to gather retro clothes here in the US that young girls in Russia want — namely, 80’s styles worn by Mallory Keaton on Family Ties — and make a killing.

But like most simple things, it never is that simple — especially when friends are involved. Triple the threats when you’ve got fashionistas involved in selling clothing.

So what will happen when the big meal ticket, a Foxy O’Clock jacket, item is coveted by one of the girls?

If the premise is promising, the style of the film delivers.

The mockumentary style gives you the feeling of ‘being there’ without compromising the wry comedy. Visually strong, with creative use of color filters, and compact (both design wise and cinematography), the film is, in a word, edgy.

Watching it you have all the sweet satisfaction of a brownie (chewy edge piece or the more moist inside ones, your choice), with none of the calories. It’s a film fix and a nostalgic time capsule — not just of the fashions, but chicks will be reminded of friendship splits and how clothes can mend more than fences, but souls too.

As Candy Eye Factory says, “The Mallorys Go Black Market suggests that the shallow and the superficial are, in fact, sometimes the quickest fix for emotional bruises. For some people, style actually is substance.”

Yummy.

No wonder it’s a Spirit of Slamdance Award winner.

Who would spent nearly a dollar a minute to watch this DVD? Well, I would have if the folks at Fred Flare hadn’t kindly given me a review copy. And I recommend it highly to fans of Indie film, fashion divas, rag dealers, and any woman who survived the fashions of the 80’s. Give The Mallorys Go Black Market $12 and it’ll give you more than 13 minutes of entertainment. I’m still gushing to all my friends about it!

Naturally, The Mallorys Go Black Market DVD won my vote for the Next Big Thing. They sure deserve the $1,000 prize in my book, and thus received my Fred Fan Fave vote. But who will get yours?

The Next Big Thing 2007 voting booth is open until July 13th, so there’s plenty of time! To vote, just click here, then click the “click to vote” button. This will take you to a page with a pulldown-box listing each designer; select and vote.

In the dark days before everyone had a personal Nintendo system, my sister and I would cautiously venture up to my uncle’s room and ask to use the Atari for a little while. Sure, it involved sitting on bedsheets that smelled strangely of pizza and averting our eyes from his poster depicting barely-bikini’d female butts, but it was usually worth it for a few minutes of grossly pixelated fun. I distinctly recall watching him play a desert combat game of some sort, and describing to me the very intimate and grotesque details of what mustard gas was and could do to a human body, and subsequently not being able to shake the imagined sensation of it for years, or eat mustard without imagining my insides blistering up. He always was a ray of sunshine. Creepy, creepy sunshine.

Between the E.T.s and Adventures and Combat Tanks, there was Swordquest, perhaps the most unexplainable, bizarre game of them all. It was all a maze of pushing flashing pixels through walls of other pixels, picking up objects and seeing numbers flash on the screen upon your success. It made no sense to me, but being the nerd-o-mo-tron and mathelete that I was, I was determined to break its code. It wasn’t until recently that I learned that the game was essentially impossible without the clues from a mini-comic that came with it. Given the state of the room where the Atari was located, instruction manuals had surely all been used as coasters or rolled up to smoke illicit substances from. How was I supposed to know that these games were based on the mathematics of the kabbalah and spiritual chakras? My Rubik’s cube still sneers at me from the corner of my desk to this very day, mismatched faces reminding me of my intellectual failures.

Swordquest was, in actuality, a series of Atari games that presented the players with a real-world puzzle to solve, with combined prizes of $150,000 for the top brain-heads. Beginning with Earthworld, and moving through Fire, Water and Airworlds, players were to find the clues at home, and then compete at an Atari gathering to determine who would take home the fabulous prizes, since all a nerd really wants is a chunk of white jade with a million precious gems embedded in it like so many olives in a delicious olive loaf. An olive loaf of pure decadence.

Unfortunately, only three of these games were made, and only two of the five amazing prizes were given away. It is very likely that they comprise the most absurdly decadent video game memorabilia ever created.

Among the five prizes were The Talisman of Penultimate Truth (made of gold and spattered with zodialogical birthstones), The Chalice of Light (made of platinum and similarly jewel-spewed), The Crown of Life and The Philosopher’s Stone, also comparably gaudy and impractical. All of these were estimated to be worth $25,000 each. The grand prize winner would take home a $50,000 Sword, which is a prize much more fitting to a geek with dreams of slaying orcs and rescuing fair maidens. Of these items, only the first two were given away, and The Talisman was quickly melted down for its raw materials and used to pay for an education. It stands to reason that if you’re going to destroy one of the finest artifacts from video game mythology, no education is going to help you anyhow. Let’s steal the hands off of Jack Kirby’s corpse while we’re at it. C’mon, it’ll help me pay my way through beautician school.

At this point in 1984, Atari was sold and the Swordquest contest was called off, with very large sums of money given to competitors who had made it that far as consolation prizes. It is rumored that former Atari CEO Jack Tramiel retains the three remaining items. If he does, I hope that he has them hanging on a wall next to mounted heads of endangered animals, and maybe animals that he just created on a whim. Sometimes, a cadre of highly-trained eels dusts this study and sings six-part harmony to him while he sips brandy from the skull of Ghost Rider. At least that’s how I like to picture it. Such objects deserve no less. The Chalice remains in the safe deposit box of its winner.

While Earthworld and Fireworld Atari carts are relatively easy to find, Waterworld is valued at roughly $60 to $75 due to its scarcity and lower production numbers, given that Atari knew that such lavish contests couldn’t be continued, and beyond that there was really no point in playing the game. Unless, of course, you enjoy navigating a digital tree of life with a fidgety pixel and figuring out which room to drop the rope in.

I think I’ll stick to Tetris, which is its own reward.

I’m a firm believer that we all have our clever inventor sides. Most of the time we just use this energy & creativity to rationalize adding to our collections, but if you’ve made something clever and you’d like to take your invention or DIY project to the next level and sell, sell, sell, why not enter it in Fred Flare’s The Next Big Thing Contest?

(Even if you’re not the creative sort, the contest entries are unusual products you’ll want to buy. I’ll even help you rationalize another purchase or collection: Who doesn’t want to support the arts — or the crafts?)

The Next Big Thing is a contest run by FredFlare.com, and here’s Keith Carollo, the man behind it, to tell us all about it.

Keith, before we get into the contest, can you tell the kids at home some basics about FredFlare.com? When did it start & why?

My partner Chris Bick and I moved to NYC in 1997 and just wanted to do something creative. We LOVED the shopping here and were always so inspired by everything from the merchandise we’d discover to the way it was displayed to the level of service (or lack thereof) in certain boutiques. We always wanted to have our own store but kinda went about it in a roundabout way…

First we started a wholesale line of stationery and home items that we sold to those stores we admired. We’d package ‘em on our kitchen table. Then we created a website and that just grew and grew. We added more and more items - some designed by us, others made by friends — and we also added other fun components like interviews, podcasts, a blog… Now we ship orders all over the globe. In 2008 I am pleased to announce that we are FINALLY gonna open that store…

What is the Next Big Thing contest?

The NEXT BIG THING is an annual CALL FOR ENTRIES contest here at fredflare.com. We are on the HUNT for the latest in craft and design and invite our awesome customers to submit items they create to be considered for possible sale on the site. We select 27 of our favorite submissions and create an exclusive boutique really highlighting these upstart brands. This year we’ve also added a $1000 PRIZE which will be awarded to the designer who is voted the “Fred Fan Fave” by fredflare.com shoppers.

What’s the purpose behind it — aside from the purely corporate dealio where you discover new products, I mean. *wink*

Ha ha! We’re SO not corporate AT ALL and it was not that long ago that this business was just my partner Chris and me at our kitchen table. I think that’s why NEXT BIG THING is so close to my heart. I remember what it was like starting out and how much I wanted a big break. THAT’s the true purpose of this contest. We love discovering new talent and helping them reach a larger audience.

The website says this is an annual event — how many years have you done this?

This is our third year. I am soooo excited to see what happens. Last year’s contest was a smash and 2005’s was incredible. I am so pleased to say that most designers report an increase in web traffic on their sites, mentions in local and/or national media as well as unexpected wholesale opportunities as a result of their participation in NEXT BIG THING.

Please define ‘amazing creations.’ Is this open to all the categories the store has, including books?

YES! Definitely. I think by “amazing creations” we mean that we’re looking for something surprising. This is completely open to interpretation. Certainly, we do well with fashion, accessories and home items but I would especially LOVE to see things the store has never sold before. Like Diaghilev said to Cocteau, “Astonish me!”

You’ve even had celebrity entries, like Amy Sedaris! I guess that’s not a question… But how often can I drop names like that? Anyway, anything you’d like to say in response?

Amy is amazing in so many ways, what else is there to say?? It was awesome inspiring working with her. She’s so accomplished and yet had such enthusiasm about making things in her living room while watching Prime Suspect.

Any people or products become famous after entering or winning The Next Big Thing?

Well, we’re working on it. I will say two things… In years past select items featured in NEXT BIG THING have gone on to become best-sellers here at fredflare.com. I’ve also noticed items we debuted first on NEXT BIG THING have later been picked up at larger chain stores like Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie.

Who does the judging and what are they looking for?

Our buying team personally reviews all submissions and then the entire staff of fredflare.com helps make final selections. What are we looking for? I’d say we pretty much are searching for something that makes us jump up and down so excited cuz it’s so cute and so brillant and we HAVE to have it!

Since this is a collectibles site, I should ask about the rarity of some of your entries… It looks like some of FredFlare products in general are ‘limited editions’ or otherwise small runs, is that true? What are some of the rarest items you’ve had? Any that you know of which have been sold out and fetching high prices on the secondary market?

Yes, it’s true we do a lot of limited-edition items and I hope to do a lot more in 2007. Soon we’re going to feature select vintage collections as well as some one-of-a-kind pieces made by artists. Currently, I think probably one of the rarest items we’ve featured is an autographed fake cake handmade by Amy Sedaris. She only made us 24 and I imagine these will be worth a lot down the road.

Utterly smitten with this contest, I’ve been looking over the past winners. I’ll tell you something of my favorites & if you have any comments on these as far as sales, popularity, anecdotal stories etc., jump in.

Sure!!!

My Paper Crane. Cute + Insane + Handmade = Must Have

I am completely in love with Heidi Kenney. I think she’s such a supertalent and I can’t wait to see what she does next. We did a really fun interview with her for our podcast and we’re working on a fun top secret limited-edition project together.

Egg Press’s “Let’s Stich Frank” — just too cute and fun. I love handmade and this seems like a great way to indoctrinate my kids.

Tess Darrow and her talented team always inspire me with their incredible letterpress line. This stitch-it kit was a surprising departure for them. Can’t wait to see what they do next!

Rock Scissor Paper: I’m a sucker for vintage prints & patterns.

Heidi and Suzie Bauer have such a great retro-tastic aesthetic! I can definitely see their line speaking to your readers.

The Ulitmate Coloring Book: Can you tell I’m a DIY girl, with some self-starter issues?

Ha ha ha! This item sells AMAZING so you’re not alone. Roxy Marj is a fashion design student here at FIT. She also illustrated this year’s visuals for NEXT BIG THING. She’s amazing and I hope we get to do lots more together.

Banana Cell Phone Holder. I actually did mention this elsewhere because I need one of these — my fingers are always hitting buttons like the volume and my camera when I talk.

I think it is: Crazy + Practical = How have I lived this long without it?

Wow, thanks! Yeah, this also sold AMAZING.

This was fun, and I hope we can do it again, Keith!

Me too.

Like when you start selling those vintage pieces, open the store, Announce the Top Secret Project…

But meanwhile I’ll be looking at your contest entries and thinking about entering next year. (Starter issues, remember?) But I can begin collecting say plush PB&J sammiches & toast anytime…

Thanks so much for helping spread the word about this year’s NEXT BIG THING. We really appreciate it!

So what’s The Next Big Thing? Maybe it’s you.