During Asia Week this past March, Christie’s blew away the competition with its auction of 199 works from the collection of Arthur M. Sackler, the Brooklyn-born psychiatrist and medical entrepreneur who spent the better part of a century amassing one of the world’s finest assemblages of Asian art. The Christie’s sale marked the first time a large trove of Sackler-sanctified objects has appeared on the market in 15 years — the bulk remains in the Smithsonian gallery in Washington, D.C., that bears his name.

The Christie’s specialist Joe-Hynn Yang predicted the session would be "the 800-pound gorilla of the season," and he was right: When the doors opened, at 9 a.m. on the 18th, such a crowd poured into Rockefeller Center that the house staff couldn’t register bidders fast enough, and the sale was delayed 20 minutes. That late start may have stoked the coals of anticipation; the session went on to earn $10,872,800, more than double the presale estimate.

The highest-grossing piece was a life-size white marble bodhisattva (est. $300-500,000), which made $1,728,900. "Until June it was on loan at the Met," says Yang, adding that most of the objects offered had been in storage and not in museum collections. Of the top 10 lots, about half were paintings: Birds and Ducks, an exemplary set of four hanging scrolls by the 17th-century artist Bada Shanren, fetched $1,202,500, and a single 16th-century scroll, by Lu Zhi, depicting a scholar beneath rocky cliffs, was catapulted past its estimate of $60,000 to $80,000 by its association with the Qianlong emperor (1736-95) — who had presented it as a gift to a government official — and landed at an astounding $212,500.

In addition, Christie’s raked in some $14,189,500 on 210 non-Sackler Chinese objects offered over two subsequent sessions. The March 18 sale consisted of 75 jades from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 68 of which sold for a total of $2,357,562, with $722,500 generated by a single white-jade brush pot from the Qianlong period (est. $600-800,000). More fresh-to-market pieces came up the following day. A Wucai fish jar from the Jiajing period (1522-66), consigned by the Harvard Art Museum, fell short of its $300,000 low estimate despite an illustrious provenance that includes the collection of Henry James, bringing just $242,500, perhaps because it is missing its top. But other sale highlights outstripped the house’s expectations: The top lot, a blue-and-white porcelain basin from the Yongle period (1403-25), more than tripled its high estimate of $600,000 to bring $2,322,500.

Much to their detriment, the other Asian departments at Christie’s did not abide by the conservatism of the Chinese sessions’ estimates. At the 131-lot Japanese and Korean auction on March 17, headlining Japanese paintings crashed. Cooling Off on a Summer Evening ($800,000-1 million), a rather sluggish undated work by Katsushika Hokusai, usually a sure seller, couldn’t find a buyer; Katsukawa Shunsho’s late 18th-century erotic painting (est. $500-700,000), likewise failed to entice.

Those weak results gave the oft-overshadowed Bonhams a chance to steal the show, which it very nearly did. On March 19, it put on the block 201 objects from the estate of Liza Hyde, a model turned Japanese-art dealer who died, at the age of 85, in December. The sale was especially strong in screens dating from the 16th to the 20th century. Of the 49 on offer, 50 percent made above their high estimates, with a large six-panel one depicting flowers (est. $15-20,000) jumping to $70,150. Bonhams grossed $1,141,438, within striking distance of the $1,742,525 Christie’s made on its Japanese and Korean session.

Sotheby’s, on the other hand, cut the category out of its lineup entirely — and the ax didn’t stop there. The house held only two sessions, half as many as it had in September. At its March 17 auction of Chinese works of art, an unidentified Asian collector bagged the two most expensive lots: a pair of jars decorated with scenes of the eight Taoist immortals crossing the sea (est. $300-400,000), for which he paid $632,500, and a lantern-shaped vase (est. $300-500,000), for $602,500. Both benefited from exceptional provenance — they were consigned by Gordon Getty, son of the late J. Paul. The Getty association was less of a boon for a 19th-century mechanical diorama of a mountain scene. Despite its uniqueness, the mammoth, 541/2-by-77-inch automaton, attracted not a single bid.