Packed with a rare-to-market trove of postwar German art from a prominent private collection, Sotheby's achieved the highest tally for any contemporary art sale in London to date, realizing £108,803,550 ($174,129,201). The stunning result exceeded the high end of the £74-105 million pre-sale expectations, with all but nine of the 88 lots finding buyers for a stellar buy-in rate of 10 percent by lot and six percent by value.

Of that bundle, 34 German paintings, primarily created by art legends Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz, Blinky Palermo, and Sigmar Polke, were provenanced from the collection of Count Christian Duerckheim-Ketelhodt, who bought them in the primary market from several cutting-edge German galleries in the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. That astonishing group made a whopping £60.4 million ($96.6 million), almost doubling the £31.8 million low estimate, including fees for the lots sold.

Overall, 29 lots offered on Wednesday night sold for over a million pounds and 45 made over a million dollars. The average lot price was £1.37 million ($2.2 million).

The tally vanquished the previous high for a Sotheby's London evening sale, set when 56 lots made £95 million ($189.5 million) back in February 2008, a time when the dollar was much stronger.

This evening's figures, in case there's any doubt of a rising market seemingly unaffected by world events, crushed the £41 million ($61.8 million) total for 44 lots sold in June 2010. It took 75 minutes to dispatch the Duerckheim lode, igniting bouts of auction fever that at moments resembled a Klondike-era gold rush of art-world prospectors.

It sure seemed that way when Gerhard Richter's soft-pornesque "Schwestern (Sisters)" from 1967 was brought on the dais and the first bid of £800,000 was followed by an impatient shout from another bidder in the salesroom calling out £1.9 million. A more tempered £900,000 would have been the norm. Even seasoned auctioneer Tobias Meyer was taken aback, asking if anyone else wanted to add "to this shocking increment."

Yes, they did. The painting of the two lounging sisters sold to a telephone bidder for £2,505,250 ($4,009,402) against an estimate of £1.2 -1.8 million.

Moments earlier, New York dealer Christophe van de Weghe out-dueled intense competition for Richter's 1974 work "1024 Farben (1024)," from a series also known as his color chart paintings, that made ú4,297,250 ($6,877,319) on a £1-1.5 million estimate.

"It was a very special painting," said van de Weghe later, "and there are only three of this size, and the whereabouts of the other two are unknown. This painting is pristine, no cracks, no damage, and we were willing to go much higher."

That was pretty much the mantra for the Duerckheim horde, which was led by the hotly contested Sigmar Polke canvas, "Dschungel" ("Jungle"), a glowing, pointillist 1967 landscape that electrified the salesroom. It sold for a record £5,753,250 ($9,207,501) to a telephone bidder (est. £3-4 million). The price smashed the previous mark set by the 1966 painting "Strand," which made £2,708,00 ($5,309,803) at Christie's London in February 2007, a high-water mark in the art market.

Another Polke — and there were nine to choose from in the Duerckheim cluster — that flew high was "Stadtbild II" ("City Painting II"), showing an electrified urban landscape at night, sold to German dealer Paul Schoenewald for £4,633,250 ($7,415,053) against a £2-3 million estimate.

"I had more air to bid on," said the dealer as he raced out of the salesroom, "this is the first time a painting of this type has come on the market, totally fresh after 30 years or so in one collection." Duerckheim acquired the work, according to auction catalogue notes, in the late 1970s through Munich dealer Fred Jahn, who might be described as the Leo Castelli of that group of German artists. The Jahn provenance accompanied the lion's share of the collection.

At least six bidders chased Georg Baselitz's iconic "Spekulatius" from 1964, the cover lot of an ursine standing man with an erection, that sold to Alexander Acquavella of New York's Acquavella Galleries for a record £3,233,250 ($5,174,493) on an estimate of £2-3 million.

Describing the Duerckheim action, San Francisco dealer Anthony Meier said, "You don't know who would come in at the end [in the bidding], and the frontrunners didn't always wind up as the winner." Meier got lucky, however, nabbing Richter's "Korsika (Feuer) Corsica (Fire)" from 1969, resembling in part a present-day riot in Athens, for £2,057,250 ($3,292,423). "I got it for a client," said the dealer, "and I thought it was a very fair opportunity." The Richter carried another Jahn gallery provenance.

If there was a Tony Award for underbidders, it would go to Paris dealer Thaddeus Ropac, who tenaciously bid for practically all of the 11 Baselitz lots, finally triumphing with Baselitz's early "Grosse Nacht (Big Night)" from 1962-63, featuring a man masturbating. It sold for £2,393,250 ($3,830,157) on an estimate of £2-3 million.

"I got the steal of the evening," boasted Ropac later. "This was, for the time, so radical and aggressive, and I was prepared to go really high."

Was the count around to witness the explosive action? Not according to Sotheby's rainmaker Cheyenne Westphal, the head of the house's contemporary art department in Europe who secured the straight-on, no-guarantee Duerckheim consignment. Apparently, the count had been in London to see the installation of the works, which constitute just a portion of his holdings, but was off in Scotland, fly fishing.

Though some of the momentum carried through the 54-lot-strong various-owners' portion of the marathon evening, which followed Duerckheim, it was solidly on the anticlimactic, let's-get-it-over-with side. Still, a fearsomely green background Francis Bacon figure, "Crouching Nude," from 1961, featuring a grotesquely distorted, reclining nude woman, sold to the telephone for a respectable and top-lot £8,329,250 ($13,330,132) against an estimate of £7-9 million.

The Bacon numbers, however, remain a shadow of his boom-time prices, including last night's "Study for a Portrait" that fetched £17,961,250 ($28,666,155) at Christie's.

"It's a tough picture," said London dealer Gerard Faggionato, who handles the Bacon estate, shortly after the brief contest for the picture. "But this is the level where we are right now. This is what it is."

Two of the more sought-after lots in the various-owners' portion of the sale were consigned by Greek collector Dimitri Mavrommatis, who was a big buyer in last week's impressionist and modern sales. Christopher Wool's somewhat banged-up, alkyd-on-aluminum painting "Untitled-P137" from 1991, dominated by the black block-lettered words "CATS IN BAG" (American slang for a mafia-style execution), sold to dealer Larry Gagosian for £1,945,250 ($3,113,178) on an estimate of 1.5-2.5 million. It last sold at auction in June 2007 at Christie's London for £988,142 ($1,383,399), seemingly a fat return on the investment.

Jean-Michel Basquiat's brazen and emblematic 'Untitled" 1981 composition with a powerful, haloed figure — bearing the same property title as the Wool, "from a private European Collection" — sold to the telephone for £5,417,250 ($8,669,787). It last sold at Sotheby's New York in November 2007 for $7,769,000, not much gain for a three-and-half-year-long investment.

Another Basquiat, "Harlem Paper," a late acrylic-and-collage-on-canvas from 1987, sold to Paris dealer John Sayegh-Belchatowski for £1,553,250 ($2,485,821). "Basquiat is difficult to find in the market," said Belchatowski moments after his successful bid, "and in private hands, the prices for Basquiat are crazy, so this is a good investment."   

Even with all of the big numbers and bouts of serially crazed bidding, some soft spots are still apparent. While Andy Warhol hit the top-ten lots of the evening with his wide-eyed 1980 portrait of punk rocker "Debbie Harry" that sold for £3,737,250 ($5,981,095) against an £3.5-5.5 million estimate, and a small-scaled "Dollar Sign" from the same year sold to New York and L.A. dealer Dominique Levi of L&M Arts for £623,250 ($998,089) on an estimate of £200-300,000, a more important Warhol failed to sell. Warhol's storied "Campbell's Soup Can (Tomato)," a 20-by-16-inch work from 1962 that was marketed by Sotheby's as the first in the now-mythic series, flopped without a single bid in the room. It had been estimated to fetch £3.5-4.5 million.

"I think the Warhol market is incredibly selective and strong," said Levi, as she exited the salesroom, "but more selective than we anticipated."  In describing the spurned soup can, Levi noted, "It wasn't so crisp compared to others, and looked a little worn."

It seems the current market, while awash in cash, is not bidding blindly, at least in some areas.