In the face of anxieties about whether art could be placed in superannuation funds, the introduction of resale royalties and the continuing global financial crisis, the auction market suffered only a modest attrition.
Sales of Australian art at auction as recorded by AASD fell to $99,431,000 from $103,262,000 regardless of a big reduction in the number of works offered and sold.
A total of 10,588 lots were sold from 13,733 offered against against 16,099 sold from 18,573 offered previously.
The average price per sale rose from $7519 to $9391 despite the absence of super-deals under the hammer.
The previous result was achieved with the helped by the $5.45 million sale of Sidney Nolan's First- Class Marksman and the $2.16 million sale of John Brack's Backs and Fronts for $2.16 million.
The number of sales between $1 million and $2 million rose from five to seven.
Menzies, even after excluding the Lawson-Menzies lower tier operation, easily maintained first place but Deutscher + Hackett lost second place to Sotheby's Australia.
Both of these latter companies produced lower turnovers with ground lost to Bonhams as it began however hesitantly to fire its sales in stated pursuit of a serious long term position in the market place.
It sold $5.6 million worth of art with a big contribution from Aboriginal art and the Paddy Bedford estate in particular.
Sotheby's Australia's new market positioning was only on reduced turnover of $16,273,000 ($17,402,000)
With a disappointing end of year sale D + H (which is fostering alternate, albeit primary market sales through its New Albion Gallery in Sydney), slipped from $19,917,000 to $14,424,000).
Sotheby's Australia, however, achieved its result once again only at the expense of an optimistically priced offering in a pessimistic market.
The company sold 52 per cent of lots on offer against 47 per cent previously. D + H produced a more satisfactory clearance of 67 per cent against 70 per cent.
Bonhams carved a slice of the market much of it coming from the Paddy Bedford estate (Aboriginal art).
Mossgreen (with the sale of the Ann Lewis estate) achieved significant new territory (a total of $5.62 million in art against $3.74 million previously) after establishing a niche market in private collections of both decorative and fine arts.
The year's full figures were achieved despite a $2 million fall in the Aboriginal art market which has been particularly fixated on droit de suite and has been in speculative over-supply
The market tentatively retained the recovery in business of the previous year but only after some heavy reduction in asking prices.
Possibly just coincidentally the market received big boost in off market sales during the year.
A big, possibly one-off, near $30 million boost was registered in the secondary market from well reported private treaty and international sales obviously not included in the auction figures.
These sales of big ticket items usually increase in hard times because of fears that any lot will receive the kiss of death if bought-in and the greater likelihood that it might be.
One big mega price deal was off-market - the negotiation of the sale of the 13th Earl of Liverpool's colonial natural history watercolours to the Mitchell Library in Sydney for $7.1 million.
These had sat on the shelves at the Derby's Knowsley Hall since 1843 and were conceivably seduced onto the market by a strong Australian dollar.
In a further sign of buoyancy in this market, which tends to be the preserve of antiquarian book dealers and libraries, a scrapbook of colonial watercolours was found in a cupboard in London, Ontario.
These were sold under the hammer of Gardner Galleries, a newcomer to AASD's awareness, although not included in the overall total. They went to the Mitchell Library for the equivalent of $1.8 million.
While this book returned to Australia, a donated Picasso was sold for the University of Sydney for $20.7 million.
The Knowsley watercolours and the Picasso deal were both done by Christie's which ceased Australian auctions in 2003 and which in so doing produced a secondary market total second only to Menzies, despite an office now staffed by one Ronan Sulich in Sydney.
Congratulations Ronan.
The year included plenty of these, the most momentous, for the saleroom being the Ann Lewis estate which Mossgreen sold to a full house at the Art Gallery of NSW.
Although the prices are baldly included in AASD as the work of the respective artists, they are, of course, something else that cannot be quantified.
They are as much "Ann Lewises" when it comes to value, as the work of the artists who signed them.
The Lewis prices may be transitory as they were in many instances many multiples of the existing market prices because of the provenance of a great collector, dealer and philanthropist and the sentimental interest of members of the Lewis family which bid strongly on several key lots.
The auction business appears to be back to normalcy in being dominated by serious collectors and vendors who sell for traditional reasons like death, divorce and debt.
While this prevails, results will continue to be lumpy, with swings dictated by pestilence, plague and bank collapses and the course of true love where there is some new hope on the horizon. The industry now has a stake in gay marriage. It may mean more divorce offerings down the track.
