Only one multi-national auction house operates in Australia. However, most highly positioned members of the industry have built up and still maintain longstanding contacts with the leading firms overseas.
These mostly still friendly contacts provide mutual support against a common problem in markets where their interests do not clash.
The big houses overseas seem to have the problem under control - leaving the smaller auction houses overseas to report the gravest abuses.
These are usually due to dealer rivalry and momentary loss of balance in the saleroom plus just newness to the market.
Christie's, Sotheby's and Bonhams have had years to fix the bad debtor and reneging buyer problems which are not exclusive to Chinese sales.
This has sometimes been at the expense of bad experience themselves.
Christie's, for example, suffered perhaps the biggest default when it sold a calculator for a Melbourne vendor in London in 1993 for £7.7 million against an estimate of £15,000 to £20,000. .
The buyer was a well established Mannheim (Germany) clock dealer. He had difficulty paying, and the sale was aborted.
Unfortunately what happens in these instances are usually agreements which are subject to confidentiality provisions, so the mode of resolution cannot be shared around.
There is little that an auctioneer can do to prevent loss from dealers who are bidding just to sink the sale.
Asian buyers have bid highly for heritage which has been looted from their country.
Some of these successful bidders have been known to walk away from the sale leaving the auctioneer to scramble to find the under bidders or alternate buyers of objects effectively given the kiss of death.
The problem presents buyers around the world with a sumo wrestle past Japanese, Korean and Russian booms pale in comparison to.
Sotheby's Australia makes it very clear with statements on its website that it is not part of Sotheby's International.
It is locally owned. But when it comes to protection from recalcitrant bidders it still looks overseas for practice guidance.
Sotheby's put its strategy simply in a statement for Antiques Reporter:
"Sotheby’s Australia is part of a global network which exercises collaborative resources, expertise and experience to ensure that all bidders are genuine. " it said.
"We have strict controls to ensure all vendors are protected."
Any one who witnessed the sales so far held by Bonhams Australia starting with the first Owston auction in May last year, will have realised that this firm is no slouch when it comes to administration and that includes minding the till.
With experience in four global auction houses behind him, Paul Sumner who is the face of Mossgreen Auctions, also has address books and connections.
Sumner told Antiques Reporter that his company had rigorous existing requirements in place for bidders at all its sales which were considered sufficient to prevent such problems arising.
There is a lot of danger that a lot of meaning can be lost in mis-translation.
Mossgreen puts a lot of emphasis on saving its face by linguistics and has appointed its own Mandarin speaking expert.
The problem became public in a big way when a small auction house Bainbridge's in London's Ruislip sold a vase with an with an estimate of £1.2m GBP, for £65m GBP.
Many auction stalwarts were very happy that an outside auction house should have such bad luck given how picky they had become about accepting low value items.
The "find" was believable given that Chinese art had been soaring in the saleroom with Sotheby's earlier auctioning a vase for $US18 million in New York.
But Bainbridge was reported to be having difficulty in securing closure of the deal, and having to send agents to China to talk to the buyer.
China is a mighty big and populous place to disappear into - not that the Antiques Reporter is suggesting anything of the kind happened in this instance.
This, and other rumoured cases caused some of the lesser known auction houses to implement new rules for certain offerings to protect themselves and vendors.
The UK's Antiques Trade Gazette (April 16) reported that Toulouse auction houses are leading the way.
Pierre Ansas, who catalogued the sale of a 1739 scroll expected to make €3 million to €4 million asked potential buyers for a returnable deposit of €200,000 to allow them to bid at the sale, and set other rules in place about settlement.
Fellow Toulouse auctioneer Chassaing-Marabat applied similar conditions in respect of an Imperial white jade seal.
The business news organisation Bloomberg has also explored the market and been told that auction houses are demanding deposits from would-be buyers.
"There must be a problem with payment, otherwise the auction houses wouldn't do this," the London-based dealer John Berwald said.
"It's a difficult balance to strike between being strict with the buyers without discouraging them."
Language and, it must be said, visual recognition, present problems for auctioning in what has become a boom market which few auction houses want to be left out of.
Few local auctioneers have Chinese speaking staff and few dealers speak much more than a few phrases of Mandarin or Cantonese.
Then there is the problem that is a little difficult to confess to in polite society. Simply put: "They (the Chinese) all look the same."
Apparently Asians have the same problems with Caucasians.
There is the further struggle to put the right name to the right face and often it is a very common Chinese surname.
This was not a problem when there was only one Chinese buyer in an auction room.
But now it is not uncommon to see 20 to 30 Chinese faces at an auction.
Dealers who do not want to be identified confirm this difficulty but say they are mastering it.
No-one wants to miss out on the big spending that has so often come, when a nation becomes newly rich.
However, booms do produce some tears, when they collapse as happened with the Korean antiquities boom in the 1970s.
Japanese art was also a boom market in the 1980s and afterwards, but Japanese buyers have now deserted their heritage in the salerooms.
China's economic boom is driving the world economy and buying of the heritage dispersed by past generations of émigrés, soldiers and civil servants providing a new lease of life for flagging decorative arts sales.
Australia enjoyed more than its fair share of these, with many connections at the time of the Boxer Rebellion when much Imperial art was dispersed.
So the remaining staff of the newly Australianised Sotheby's Australia must have heaved a sigh of relief when the 'Hundred Boys' vase that made the big money in the catalogue of its latest decorative arts sale in Melbourne was paid for within the specified time and collected.
The vase sold for $480,000 at the company's decorative arts sale in April.
Antiques Reporter has verified that settlement has taken place
The sale must have given a major boost to the house's credentials, its cash flow and viability at a crucial stage in its reinvigoration.
The vase had soared in defiance of expectations and old timers still have difficulty in rationalising it.
Ann Roberts, who is Sotheby's Australia's specialist, with four decades of experience in the industry including her once odd positioning in Darwin, stands by her original opinion of the vase.
Only a few names have emerged from the fray and one or two noted bidders only identified by their paddle numbers.
Oddly the paddle number 888, meaning triple luck, appears elusive, as if buyers are keen to avoid display and being conspicuous.
The sales are very different to other Asian sales, particularly Indonesian, where buyers hold the sales up while they speak to their grandmother, and bidders stand up and run around consulting friends and neighbours when a lot comes up of shared interest.
The growth of the Chinese market is being felt by auction houses and dealers alike with similar experiences.
With several decades experience behind it, many new buyers have found the Joshua McClelland Print Room in Collins Street.
Fifteen years ago this gallery had only one serious (ethnically) Chinese buyer. Now it says it has about 10.
But some of these are simply local agents for overseas buyers. "They come, they photograph, they question you and then they go away and sometimes come back again," said the director, Mrs Joan McClelland.
Roberts rationalises her estimate of $20,000 on the vase of as realistic in terms of what had gone before.
But she has noted that the Chinese market has been changing with the emphasis on pieces being both "mark and period" as well as in perfect condition, as these lots become more elusive.
Helping explain the discrepancies in opinion, Ray Tregaskis, who is a consultant for Mossgreen, says that somehow the Chinese have come to relate better to the more recent emperors.
Despite this - and even while moving away from the dream of buying works that are both mark and period, provenance, such as London dealerships like Bluett's, still appeared to excite them immensely.
(A lot of ceramics in the Qing dynasty bear the mark of earlier dynasties. Copying was not the objectionable practice it is now seen as in the West, indeed it was sometimes considered as reverential.)
The Australian part in that story has been "waiting to happen" noted Sotheby’s Australia Chairman, Geoffrey Smith.
The auction room was "electric," with strong bidding from local Australian buyer’s competing against international phone bidders when the Chinese lots came up, he said.
The successful telephone bidder for the Qing Dynasty vase was from Hong Kong and actively bid against local Australian bidders from within the auction room.
The interest has not come on suddenly even in Australia.
A scroll similarly attributed (the catalogue suggested it was a later work in the style of the Portuguese artist who introduced Western painting techniques to China) fetched $564,000 at Sotheby's in Melbourne in May 2001.
Objects such as these often disappear into anonymous collections and cannot be dug up for confirmation of their new status as major art works.
The boom ranges from the Song period to contemporary. However, it excludes funerary material such as Tang and Han figures collected by such notables as Sir Keith Murdoch.
Melbourne dealer Marjorie Ho of East and West Art said late 19th century pen and wash drawings she bought in China in the 1970s have now gone back to China at much advanced prices.
Several noughts have been added over the decades to the work of artists such as Xhangda Chien and Qi Bashi.
One to two noughts have been added to the price of some of the contemporary art shown by Sydney dealer Ray Hughes in the 1990's.
Prices of $15,000 and $20,000 for works by Zeng Fenzhi are now history and possibly pre-maturely resold by Hughes through European dealers a couple of years ago.
But the ultimate buyers from antique to modern remain faceless - known only through their agents in the auction room.
Bidder number 100 at the latest Mossgreen sale was said to be buying for a man who is supplying material for museums in China.
A bidder with paddle 100 bought 150 of the 1797 lots on offer at Mossgreen’s sale of Asian decorative arts in Melbourne on November 30 last year.
He did not speak English but an aide explained that he wanted to remain anonymous, and that he was buying for a museum he was establishing in mainland China.
The big spender paid well over the estimates for many lots, with fellow local and overseas Chinese bidding strongly against him.
His enthusiasm had a price however, as he sometimes pulled out on lots for which he appeared to have limited enthusiasm.
His top buy was a 30cm tall Chinese carved ivory vase and cover, Qianlong mark, Qing dynasty which made $103,700 including buyer’s premium.
Its $85,000 hammer was way in excess of its $20,000 to $30,000 pre-sale estimate.
Sumner reported the sale grossed $3.6 million including premium, of which Asian art accounted for $2.2 million
The contents reflected Mossgreen's extraordinary success in wooing owners of small collections.
It included the estate of Norman Rodd who amassed a collection of Chinese bronzes and jades and also a very fine group of Japanese ivories (which are now also bought by the Chinese from Taiwan and the mainland.)
Isaac Tepper's hoard of Chinese and Japanese furniture, sculpture and works of art also together with Chinese and Japanese was also keenly contested.
A 17/18th century rhinoceros horn libation cup attracted strong interest and led the stampede back to China.
Sumner appeared particularly chuffed to have Sally Robin as a mandarin speaker when his sales came around (there is one such just round the corner).
Chinese antiquities dealer T T Tsui made a big impact on the Australian scene through loans and donations in 1995 to the National Gallery of Australia, of Chinese objects bought overseas.
Corporate player (last reported as a Thai biscuit maker) ex-Melbourne Jack Chia's collection of flame red Chinese porcelain was a big hit in Hong Kong in 1995.
Jason Yip has been a big donor of Chinese paintings to the National Gallery of Victoria and backs a gallery in Melbourne specialising in Asian art.
The unrelated, former Sydney Antiques Centre resident Vernon Yip has moved to Shanghai but made appearances at the Owston sales where he bought rhino horns "for a museum in Germany."
Smaller auction houses, like Sydney's Aalders Auctions which has established high prices for Chinese objects at both house and room sales; and Davidson's Auctions, which has had mixed offerings of Chinese paintings and vases and one big triumph (reported in Antiques Reporter......) will be fine tuning their account procedures and watching registrations closely lest more sleepers turn up in unexpected places.
But the hubris of being seen to spend big in those more informal settings may be a little less inviting.
