The gallery just finished a sold-out Currin show in London, where 11 paintings found new homes at prices ranging from $40,000 to $1.2 million. “The thing about John,” says Coles, “is that in a good year you might get two paintings, so people wait for a very long time. And they tend to be repeat buyers as well.”

Zurich heavyweight Bruno Bischofberger had one of the more engaging, if not daring, stands, slathered with an eye-popping mix of contemporary works and older masters. Oddly, to some at least, the great big 1983 Jean-Michel Basquiat painting Onion Gum was priced at €10 million, higher than Paul Gauguin's quieter Femme en Bretagne (1894), which was set at €8.5 million, and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec's oil on panel Madame Poupoule (1899), at €4 million.

“We like to show a few old things,” says Bischofberger. “We just want to let people know we have them.”

And if there wasn’t enough excitement at the fair, James Roundell found some outside on the usually well-behaved streets of Basel. The London dealer spotted a pickpocket pinching a lunch-goer’s coat and gave spirited chase for about six blocks before the sprinting thief dropped the jacket. “I wasn’t expecting that kind of excitement,” Roundell said, still flushed.

Judd Tully is Editor at Large of Art+Auction.