Sales built over the course of last week’s Art Miami Fair, with galleries across the board reporting stronger commerce than last year. After an opening on Tuesday that drew crowds but not especially robust sales, attendance took a dip Wednesday as visitors strayed to the opening of Art Basel Miami Beach. But attendees returned to Art Miami’s Design District location in force Thursday morning, in part thanks to the breakfast opening of the Rubell Collection nearby. And by then they were ready to buy. What follows is a selective roundup of sales and reactions noted during the run of the fair, the city’s oldest — predating ABMB by more than a decade — and its most diverse, bringing together both modern and contemporary dealers and including galleries focused on specialized areas from design to classic Surrealism to Southeast Asian art.

– Predicting early on that he would “sell the booth,” Asher Edelman for the first time offered a themed presentation, centered on a 1530 Titian from his own private collection flanked by variants on the pierced martyr by more than half a dozen contemporary artists, some of them specially commissioned for the event. A large 1981 Doug Argue painting on the theme sold early for $50,000. Also doing well were Cathy McClure’s sculptures made from the noise-generating machinery hidden inside of children’s stuffed toys; with the plush bodies removed these hard plastic innards looked vulnerable, especially after the artist attached suction cup arrows. Seven from the edition, priced at $1,250 each, were sold by half way through the fair.

– Hollis Taggart Galleries reported two major sales by the middle of the second day: Giorgio Cavallon’s "No. 84" (1967) fetched $75,000, while a large, dynamic  Theodoros Stamos priced at $225,000 also found a new home. Despite Europe’s economic woes, both sold to new clients from Spain.

– Barry Friedman, whose double-wide booth mixed photographs, paintings, and design objects, reported brisk sales in all categories. He showed at Design Miami last year but was told that he would be strictly limited to design objects if he wanted to return, so he opted to come back to Art Miami, where he had shown for the better part of a decade previously. Half a dozen Michael Eastman photos of Havana, priced at $9,500 for the five-foot-tall print and $22,000-30,000 for the eight-foot-tall print, had sold. Holds had been placed on a Gottfried Helnwein painting of a your woman, and more clients had expressed interest in a Joris Laarman table than were available from the edition of eight.

– Modernism of San Francisco also found that photography was moving well. Michael Dweck’s beach-themed portraits “always do well at the fair,” according to president Martin Muller, and by the second day three prints had sold for $15,000 to $18,000. Also moving early was a Jacques Villeglé décollage from 1970, priced in the $100,000 range. Muller praised the fair as more user-friendly and less intimidating than ABMB out in Miami Beach. His booth’s placement just across from the large, centrally located VIP lounge doesn’t hurt.

– Priscilla Vail Caldwell, partner at New York’s James Graham & Sons, praised the fair’s structure and only wished for better transportation among the various venues. Among the dealer’s sales were a Mary McDonnell painting "Man With Pink " (2011), which brought $28,000, and a pair of John Zinsser drawings after works by Stella and Warhol, priced at $3,000 each.

– David Lusk of Memphis had a massive large welded metal sculpture placed in one of the fair’s many public display spaced sprinkled throughout the tent venue. Maybe that presentation helped spur sales of the Southern artist’s work. Of the half dozen pieces by the regional, conceptual artist, two sold early on: a text relief "Really" and a large folding screen made of word balloon shapes that brought $22,000 from a Boston collector.

– Frey Norris did well with works by artists newly represented by the San Francisco gallery. As of Thursday five works had sold, all to clients new to the gallery. Chitra Ganesh showed digital C-prints like those recently exhibited at the Andy Warhol Museum, selling for $20,000. And the Australian duo Sean Cordeiro and Claire Healy, whose first U.S. gallery show opens this week in Norris’s new, larger location, sold a set of “paper” airplanes made from metal recycled from decommissioned aircraft ($3,500).