An imperial seal box with ivory inlay from the court of Emperor Qianlong sold for $722,396 at Poly Auctions in Beijing.

Poly Auctions have fired the opening salvo of the fall auctions season in Beijing with a diverse sale of Chinese antiquities that range from porcelain to jade. Their 12th Fine Arts Auction ran from October 23-25 and achieved total sales of RMB 96.388 million ($14.5 million), 50 percent down from the phenomenal spring sale when they achieved a world record for a work of Chinese art at auction, selling a masterpiece of Song Dynasty calligrapher Huang Tinjian for 436.8 million yuan (then around $64 million).

The sales, however, can hardly be reckoned a disappointment: Poly achieved a hundred 100 percent sell-through rate. As is now becoming an established rule in Beijing, works coming to market from foreign collections achieved the highest sales, with 404 lots sold for a total of almost RMB 20 million ($3 million).

The top lot was a delicate imperial seal box with ivory inlay from the court of Emperor Qianlong which sold for RMB 4.816 million ($722,396), six times its presale estimate. Knocked down in second place was a mountain shaped jade carved with a scene from the life of the Daoist sage Lao-tzu, which sold for RMB 2.128 million ($319,167) against a top estimate of RMB 1.2 million. Also notable was the sale of a doucai bowl from the Yongzheng era, which achieved 1.848 million ($277,166) against no stated estimate.

The auctions will heat up again in late November when Poly will return to the salesrooms alongside their main rival, the Guardian auctioneers.