This was the year Bill Gross said his stamps had outperformed his bond fund, Stanley Ho beat Damien Hirst in bidding for a truffle, and Amazon.com Inc. paid 39 times estimates for a book of J.K. Rowling stories. Among the mishaps, Marie Antoinette's pearls and a Van Gogh painting didn't sell. New money poured into the salerooms in New York, London and Hong Kong, swelling auctions by 46 percent at Sotheby's, to $5.33 billion; Christie's International's totals aren't in yet. Andy Warhol and Mark Rothko paintings fetched more than $70 million apiece in May, and Jeff Koons in November deposed Hirst as the priciest living artist. Analysts are watching to see if prices continue to rise in 2008. The biggest financial institutions have marked down more than $80 billion after a surge in U.S. subprime mortgage defaults prompted investors to shun higher-risk debt. "The art market will soften, and an adjustment in values will take place, but it may not happen for six months to a year," California collector Eli Broad said in August. "Many of the buyers of contemporary art have been hedge-fund managers and other investors who obviously are having a difficult time and have lost lots of money," Broad said in an e-mail. The 2007 boom boosted values of all kinds of collectibles, from Chinese ceramics and antiquities to diamonds and stamps. Here are some high points and low points of the auction year: Pimco Profit -- Billionaire fund manager Gross raised $9.1 million for charity in June by selling early British stamps -- mostly bought in 2000 -- that outperformed his Pacific Investment Management Co.'s bond fund, the world's largest. "It's four times cost," Gross said after the sale in New York."It's better than the stock market." -- Amazon, after selling more than 12 million Harry Potter books online, paid almost $4 million at Sotheby's for Rowling's "The Tales of Beedle the Bard." Amazon's Web site has summaries and reviews of the best-selling author's handwritten stories, which no one currently has permission to publish. -- Christie's sold Steve McQueen's 1963 Ferrari Lusso for $2.3 million, or twice the top estimate at a California auction in August. Christie's soon after dismantled its car auction business, which has much lower commissions than art sales. -- Casino billionaire Ho this month paid $330,000 for a white Italian truffle at a charity auction, exceeding the previous record by about 50 percent. In September, Ho paid HK$69.1 million ($8.9 million), the highest price ever for a Qing Dynasty bronze horse head, giving it to the Chinese government, which is trying to recover its treasures. -- Banksy's "Di Faced Tenners," or 10-pound banknotes carrying Princess Diana's face instead of Queen Elizabeth II's, tripled their top estimate at a Bonhams sale in October, fetching 24,000 pounds ($48,000) as demand for the artist soared. Not everyone is so enthusiastic about the Bristol, England-born graffiti painter: On London's Charterhouse Street, a defaced Banksy rat image says, "Go Back to Bristol, Boy".No Buyers There were scattered signs the auction houses are entering more difficult markets, in items that found no buyers after featuring in the press from the Middle East to Europe, the U.S. and Asia. -- A necklace made from the pearls of Marie Antoinette, who was guillotined in 1793, failed to sell on Dec. 12 at Christie's, which valued it at as much as 400,000 pounds. -- The same day, Maria Callas's love letters to Giovanni Battista Meneghini, her former husband and mentor, failed to sell at a Milan auction. Sotheby's, which had priced the opera singer's letters at as much as 70,000 euros ($102,739), reoffered them successfully at the end of the auction at a 50 percent discount. -- The year's big loser was Vincent van Gogh's "The Fields (Wheat Fields)," estimated by Sotheby's at as much as $35 million. It received no bids at a Nov. 7 auction and Sotheby's stock plunged 35 percent over three days as it took a $14.6 million loss on guaranteed impressionist works that sold below their estimates.