Both sales and attendance were expectedly sparse, with The Armory Show and five other fairs all vying for collectors’ overtaxed attention spans. Rebecca Ibel of the Columbus, Ohio-based Rebecca Ibel Gallery, however, said that sales were not her only focus.

Ibel said her gallery has had success at bigger fairs in Miami and Los Angeles, but she also likes participating in smaller shows. “It’s fun,” she said. “I like doing it—you have to be a little creative and it’s just a different environment to look at art.”

And at least one collector was glad she decided to duck into Red Dot after attending the larger fairs. Eyewash founder Larry Walczak had just finished showing us David Kramer’s autobiographical works on paper and telling us how his Brooklyn gallery sold out of them in Miami when, as if on cue, a pair of young women burst into the room.

“We love these,” one collector gasped. “We saw these yesterday at Pulse, but they were already sold out.”