On the approach to the Scope Art Fairs tent at Lincoln Center on Sunday afternoon, one of the first works that hove into view was Appetite for Destruction, Whitney Biennial artist Robert Williamss surrealistically sci-fi 1978 cover art for the Guns & Roses album, on display at the booth of San Diego’s Symbolic Collection. “We put it there to catch peoples’ eyes,” said a gallery employee, who revealed the hefty price-tag in a whisper: $400,000. “We’re not sure if it is going to sell.”

Such six-figure price tags are rare at Scope, which specializes in less–tested names and more economical pieces.But Symbolic Collection’s lure seemed to be working — by Sunday afternoon they had sold a rigorously cubist grayscale cityscape by the singer Frank Sinatra (New York, 1987) for an impressive $40,000, though another Sinatra painting, a small 1957 oil of a clown that the gallery was marketing as a self-portrait, remained unsold at $28,000. Symbolic’s eccentric, music-biz-heavy mixture of work also included two small drawings by John Lennon, a quick sketch by Paul McCartney, and a handful of drawings by cartoonist R. Crumb, priced around $25,000. Despite a just-opened show of Crumb’s work at David Zwirner, collectors were not biting yet.

According to most gallerists, the four days of selling had started off slowly in the Upper West Side tents. Anonymous Gallerys Poppy Pulitzer reported that Thursday and Friday had been quiet for most galleries — ARTINFO found few sales reports on that first day — but that Saturday had been busy. “We’re hopeful for today,” she said early on Sunday. Nevertheless, Anonymous had sold six collages by Greg Lamarche, priced from $900 to $2,500. For the less flush collector, Lamarche had slipped leftover paper cuttings from his collages into little “dime bags” and priced them at $10 each. The gallery had also sold a drawing by Kostas Serementis and two black-and-red-striped acrylic on paper works by Eric Haze — they resembled Martin Creeds sparest paintings — for $5,000 apiece.

With less money at stake than at some other fairs, many Scope exhibitors took more fanciful approaches to their booths. Miami’s a.m.f. projects provided an inviting, immersive environment, lining its walls with brightly colored composite fabrics by the textile designer and performance artist KREL and displaying a row of cast silicone Hermès Birkin bags by Shelter Serra, which were available at $1,500-$2,000 a pop — less than half the price of authentic Birkins, which generally start around $5,000 for a standard version.

KREL was designing and sewing original, bespoke garments on-site, a textile project that she has also staged at art-fair stops in Miami, Iceland, Switzerland, and Costa Rica.  According to the booth's curator, Daria Brit Shapiro (who was being fitted for a blouse when ARTINFO visited), the artist's production of 600 individual outfits over the last 14 months was “crazy.” Those affordable ensembles, which usually take about 10 minutes to measure and 20 minutes to sew, ranged in price from $35 for a basic hat to $300 for a more ornate cape. KREL declared she could meet the needs of any client, recalling that at a previous stop she had created “bottomless” chaps and a thong for one collector.

Fashion was also the central theme of Scope Markt, a special section curated by Diane Pernet that displayed artistic-sartorial crossovers. German collective Chicks on Speed, better known for their musical projects than their fashion designs, had installed a messy wall installation featuring a video (for $4,500) and an assortment of fashion accessories, like a $240 beaded and embroidered “LOVE CATS” scarf and a $500 yellow-and-black plaid “C.O.S. Bag.” One scarf had sold but, alas, the installation's finest piece, the “NO-BIKINI” — a bathing suit whimsically printed with photographs of the body parts generally hidden beneath the fabric — was not for sale.

On the more staid end of the spectum, New York and Zurich gallery frosch&portmann won early sales with a tightly curated selection of works by Julia Kuhl, Hooper Turner, and Robert Yoder. By Thursday afternoon, Turner’s painting Turntable & Laptop had sold for a sporty $2,800, and several of Yoder's collages on paper priced from $1,200 to $4,800 had sold.

New York gallerist Mike Weiss, meanwhile, had secured a hulking booth — a sign of art market confidence if ever there was one — and filled it with similarly gigantic paintings, most of which had sold on Wednesday and Thursday. Kim Dorlands paint-heavy, 126-by-84-inch Shore, 2009, sold for $30,000; a painting by Christian Vincent had sold for $60,000; and at least five of Liao Yibais decadent stainless-steel sculptures had sold for around $60,000. These were easily some of the highest prices achieved at the fair.

Bogota’s Christopher Paschall Galeria (S.XXI) also had reason to celebrate on Sunday, saying they had moved “a few sets” of Joel Grossmans A Brief History of Art for $15,000. An edition of nine, the work includes 36 “digital paintings” — Grossman’s sketches of works by Gauguin, Mondrian, and Rothko printed on vinyl paper and affixed to acrylic boards. The portable compendium comes with its own specially designed wood crate for easy shipping.

San Francisco-based Eleanor Harwood Gallery also had a standout booth, including a selection of books from David Steins “Unlikely Library” project, which mixes real books with fabricated creations by the artist and sells them in sets for $1,000. By Sunday, one set that included a William F. Buckley book called White Slang: Inside the White Subculture (not real) had sold. The gallery, which shows largely emerging artists, priced most of its works affordably. Several gouache and ink works by 22-year-old Gideon Chase were priced at $1,200 and sold throughout the fair. Harwood, the director, appeared pleased with her first New York fair appearance. She said that when doing the Miami fairs in the past she has run into several collectors from the West Coast, but at Scope she was meeting mostly East Coast buyers — a boon for her California–based gallery.

Other sales below $10,000 seemed to be occurring with some regularity. Kunsthaus Santa Fé sold a graphite and embroidery work by Tania Candiani for $4,000, Miami’s Carol Jazaar earned a $2,400 check for a drawing by Jorge Pantoja, and Bonelli ArteContemporanea, an Italian gallery, reported selling a large drawing by 28-year-old Elena Monzo, who makes portraits free–floating contorted figures, for $6,000. Several small watercolors by Tadashi Moriyama also sold for $500 and up. Roving Brooklyn gallery jackie paper was also aiming for that price point, presenting a solo display by Ryan V. Brennan, whose “cinemallage" consisted of mixed media, video screen, and found object works ranging from $4,800-$6,500. A boom box installation with a hip-hop mix track could be purchased for $3,000, and by Sunday one of Brennan's drawings had been sold for $800.

More than a few gallerists were also trying to move work in the loftier five-figure realm, and some, at least, were finding eager buyers. The Pool NYC had sold an Eteri Chkadua oil for $35,000; Aureus Contemporary, of Providence, Rhode Island, had sold a Sara Carter painting for around $30,000, and Wilde Gallery of Berlin had sold a scratchy, vaguely Neo-expressionist painting by John Brown for $32,000.

First-timers at the fair, though, seemed encouraged by the pace of sales. Leah Oates, of Brooklyn’s Station Independent Projects, had stocked her debut booth with variously priced works, from photographs in the under-$1,000 area to a video by Pierre St-Jacques, whose work had been priced between $5,000 and $7,000. “A collector has been following the work for a few years and finally bought something because it’s at Scope,” she said of one piece's new owner. St-Jacques had shown at PooL fair in Miami, and Oates had shown at the Bridge art fair in 2009. For both artist and exhibitor, Scope meant stepping up to a new level of exposure. “I think that, for the first year, I did pretty well,” Oates said of her debut performance. “I would come back.”