However, a few odd international sales gave the fair, which closed on Sunday after five days at the Royal Exhibition Buildings, some links with the real world.
Exhibitors meanwhile concentrated on maintaining turnover with a greater number of more pleasing lesser priced art works for the local consumption which as always dominated the fair..
The private jets with private collectors on board may have been missing but a commercial flight attracted one London buyer who made an adventurous purchase.
The buyer, whom the gallery cannot name for confidentiality reasons, paid $US12,500 for a Mormon art work by an Arizona artist from a Canadian born gallerist - one of the three overseas galleries exhibiting at the fair.
Two Australian collectors bought engraved woodcut portraits by the American artist Chuck Close from Sydney's Utopia Gallery at $US31,000 each.
But these were rare global flurries in a fair which some exhibitors fear may now become not just a regional, but a Melbourne city event, as the geographically advantaged Hong Kong Art Fair gathers strength.
Australia is a long way for most (European and US and even Asian galleries) and does not have collectors with prepared to spend even like fellow ex-colonials, the Canadians.
Several of these, unlike Australians, appear on the top 200 collectors list published every year by America's Artnews.
This year despite relative national prosperity, Australia fell further behind with overseas participation in the fair reduced to three galleries, a few overseas purchases and a rare buy or two by local collectors of overseas works by Australians.
Even the Korean galleries, who had seemed entrenched, stayed away.
Osaka's Yamaki Art Gallery came back, but Mothers Tankstation from Dublin and Valentine Wills Fine Art of Kuala Lumper, Galerie 2 of Seoul, Galerie Urs Meile and Redgate Gallery of Beijing were missing.
There was also some turnover of New Zealand galleries.
Hong Kong-based 10 Chancery Lane Gallery returned in particular to support and monitor the progress of artists who have appeared in Brisbane's Asian Triennale.
This localisation follows the transformation of Sotheby's local operation into a franchise making the secondary market even more disconnected than three years ago when Christie's ceased operating here and dramatically cut its staffing to one.
Just ahead of the 2008 MAF dealers were pressing to make the biannual event annual, possibly alternating with Sydney. Reason prevailed (sales were not big enough) and the Global Financial Crisis came along in time for plans to be shelved.
With the Federal Election and proposed new rules excluding art and other collectibles from the tax protection of superannuation funds, and the admittedly down the track implications of the resale royalty, galleries tended to be cautious in their choice of what to show.
Like players in the secondary market, who bring out attractively price flower paintings or shows of women artists when times are tough, exhibitors tended this time towards the saleable.
Diverting works that tended not to present too big a challenge or require too much art speak to articulate dominated.
Works that could be shown in a domestic setting - and that usually meant small works - were a popular choice. Porcelain figures curiously in an 18th century manner, appear to be voguing.
Painting was back, but with the accent still on the abstract or semi-figurative.
Installation art was rare as were other examples of artists' philosophical statements. Digital art including photography also tended to be elusive.
The conservative strategy paid off, with turnover stated by the organisers, the Melbourne Art Foundation, steady at around the previous fair's total of $11 million.
Yet it took a 56 per cent rise in the number of transactions to achieve this, as the unit value of sales subsided.
The one new gallery from overseas, Trepanier Gallery of Calgary, had continuously the most crowded stand as visitors oggled the peculiar perspective silicon figure sculptures of Evan Perry.
This was an astute choice, as Perry is an associate of Ron Mueck, an Australian-born artist who works in a similar idiom and has been well exhibited Down Under.
The gallery also showed work by Kent Monkman, painting contemporary takes of (Canadian) colonial landscapes to which Australian collectors who love Australia's traditional masters might relate.
Director Yves Trepanier was still in the process of tying up sales as we went to press. Often the full effects of attending art fairs, unlike auctions, are not felt for many months after as collectors, private and institutional, accumulate funds and revisit the work and galleries with which they have made contact.
Trepanier's presence had been encouraged by words from fellow a dealer whose family came from Canada, Fehily Contemporary of Melbourne. It was onto Ken and Lisa Fehily's stand that a London visitor walked to purchase the Mormon bonnet.
Consisting of a pearl corsage with pins, fabric and steel, this was one of a small edition from which others had been exhibited at this year's Sydney Biennale.
With the sharp points not accidentally directed inwards, these art objects are certainly not for the wardrobe.
The creator, Angela Ellsworth who lives in Phoenix, Arizona, attended the Biennale and conducted crowd-pulling Mormon dances to flaunt these reminders of women suffering cruelty, submission and control.
Beautiful, the bonnets were also brutal, and sold against the prevailing trend for pleasurable diversion.
So did the work of Danie Mellor at the stand occupied by Sydney's Michael Reid.
Skulls and coffins naturally tended to feature less than flowers and landscapes at the fair. Only two years ago, led by a celebrated multi-million dollar specimen by Damien Hirst's for sale in London, they were everywhere.
At up to $30,000 a canvas, five of Mellor's works featuring these motifs as part of the exploration and interpretation of his Aboriginal heritage, found ready buyers.
Mellor's work is shown in the watershed exhibition Curious Colony at the Newcastle Art Gallery which was inspired by the 200th anniversary celebrations of Governor Macquarie's appointment as NSW and in particular, his collector's chest which was purchased by the State Library of NSW for a reported $2 million in 2004.
Two other artists who fared well at the fair were also represented at the fair.
They were Robin Stacey (shown at Newcastle alongside a still life by colonial artist John Gould) with a red sticker against a Type C Print titled Bombe-Cape Bulbs, and priced at $Au6,800 on the Sydney Stills Gallery stand, and at Gallery Barry Keldoulis (Sydney).Joan Ross, working in video and in stuffed kangaroo fur. Sales proved both to be hot artists.
With the work on the Trepanier Gallery, Mellor and Co appeared to confirm one artistic trend in the fair - an international concern with the colonial past.
Melbourne's powerful galleries, Niagara, Anna Schwartz and Tolarno, put on striking shows and, with some of the best emerging artists their reputations naturally attract and made the best sales.
Schwartz sold out the work Daniel Crooks on one of the rare stands at the fair devoted to a one-man show. Sixteen of his videos at $15,000 each were sold.
On the eve of the fair, the well known collectors Corbett and Yueji Lyon purchased from Tolarno Galleries, the entire Peter Atkins Hume Highway project, a large series of abstract art works, for their Lyon House museum in Kew.
Naturally little criticism of the professionally run fair came from this quarter.
Jarrod Rawlins of Melbourne's Uplands Gallery, which battled to make sales said "The fair ended okay for us, it's all a bit of fun.
"However it is 's not the event it used to be and this year was a good indicator of that.
"The urgency that a regional art fair like this once reflected does not really exist any more. The slow pace was quite a relief really, it seems much more civilized this way, perhaps it is an indication that the art world is returning to a more confident and protracted approach to collecting art.
"As fun as they are perhaps this art fair model is not aging all that well."
Tristian Koenig of another Melbourne art space, Neon Parc, which does four fairs a year, summed up: As the first post-recession edition of Australia's biennial art fair, the overall mood of Melbourne was conservative - mainly group exhibitions, predominantly predictable choices.
"Mostly dealers played safe, although there were a few lovely presentations like Gemma Smith at Sarah Cottier, or individual stand out works like an incredible 1969 Tony Tuckson at Watters".
"As the first post-recession edition of Australia's biennial art fair, the overall mood of Melbourne was conservative - mainly group exhibitions, predominantly predictable choices.
Many interstate galleries put the accent on fun and networking with far from rave sales and pondering how they might feel paying $18,000 or so at the next fair, especially with two Hong Kong art fairs taking place before the next MAF takes place.
Sydney's Tim Olsen, however, showing Philip Hunter as well as his father John, should have been happy with $200,000 in sales.
Rex Irwin of Sydney sold 9 works by the one Australian flower artist well supported by contemporary art criticism, Cressida Campbell, whose wood cuts were priced at $8000 to $45,000.
Chris Hodges, of Sydney's Utopia Gallery, sold two woodcuts from a technically superb series of portraits by the American Chuck Close carrying a price tag of $US33,000. He visited the artist in New York and is planning an exhibition of his work in Sydney.
Some dealers who bought their stockrooms were suitably punished, but a few good displays also appeared to lack red stickers.
But then some dealers are too modest to use them and others refuse to disclose prices post sale lest when unveiled at a dinner party, the buyer's largesse or lack of it, in buying the work, might become visible to all.
The lack of wireless internet and a limited VIP program came in for some criticism.
