The sales sustained New York's reputation for appreciating excellence in the refined market for fine Chinese furniture - and for a more recent New York attachment to modern Chinese painting.
They were offered during the city's annual Asia Week, of which the highlight was the sale of New York dealer, the late Robert Hatfield Ellsworth's collection which made $US131.6 million.
Ellsworth was the son of a New York dentist and an opera singer. He was otherwise a self-made man and bachelor who from a 20 room apartment on Fifth Avenue dealt his way into a fortune, winning the patronage of both the Astors and the Rockefellers.
Chinese antique furniture, which tends to be low key and classically beautiful, produced a record of $US9.68 million IBP against estimates of $US800,000 to $US1.2 million, for the glamour wooded huanghuali* furniture.
In the Ellsworth sale which required six sessions, beginning March 17 to complete, the record was for a set of four horse-shoe back armchairs from the Ming period (17th century).
Christie's consignment produced a useful $US905,000 IBP for a pair of Zitan armchairs of the later Qing period. Sold in an auction of fine Chinese ceramics and works of art they made three times the top estimates.
A similar single armchair made $US182,500 in the same rooms in March 2010. The armchairs are lower than the standard Qing armchairs but the decoration of a bat with chimes is, the catalogue notes state, very Qing.
During the same series of auctions Sotheby's sold a set of four enamel panels of the Eight Immortals for $US1.8 million.
Painted in 1931 the panels were by Wang Qi who was a pivotal figure Chinese art.
They were consigned by Mrs Phynea Paroulakis of the Paspaley property investment family in Australia through the Sotheby's Australia franchise.
This was not the only out front family to attract some support from recent sales. At an auction held by Mossgreen, Paul and Eva Lederer's more ebullient decorative furnishings of a Point Piper residence were keenly bid last month.
The dispersal attracted keen interest among prosperous local and some overseas Chinese.
Another antiques dealer, albeit one now very much with us, Graham Geddes, had a clearance sale through Leonard Joel in Melbourne last week..
Over the two days auction with 1890 lots offered the sale grossed $A1.44 (IBP) million compared with the low estimate of $5.35 million.
Only 633 lots found buyers at this "relocation" sale caused by the sale of the retail property.
So like Dame Nellie Melba, whose resplendent ghost is returning to the saleroom through a collection being sold by Sotheby's Australia shortly, Geddes the holder of sales (he has had many) may be making more appearances.
* huanghuali or yellow flowering pear wood is noted for its abstract patterned shimmering surfaces.
