The record went to Paris, by phone, to Asia

The month's top price was not set in New York or London. A Monet from a French family collection made €50 million at Sotheby's Paris, the highest price for any artwork at auction in France, according to Reuters. It had no guarantee, per MutualArt. Six bidders chased it for about 45 minutes and it went to a collector in Asia on the phone.

London was the opposite. Christie's sold £218.6 million in one evening, its press release says, but every one of the 41 lots in the Peter Simon collection was guaranteed before the sale began, The Art Newspaper reports. The top Simon lot, a Bacon, hammered £500,000 over its low estimate. The £25 million Mondrian hammered £1.5 million over its own.

Then Geneva. Phillips sold all 217 watches for CHF 92 million, which it calls the first live watch auction to pass $100 million. Four of its top five lots were by one living watchmaker.

Two of 34 buyers are on the record.

• Shawn Mehta, who runs F.P. Journe's London boutique, won a pre-production Journe Résonance for CHF 4.94 million at Phillips. He told Hodinkee he was bidding for a friend and not for the brand. He was also the underbidder on the top lot of the sale.
• Beaumont Nathan, an art advisory firm, bought the record Popova, according to Apollo, which cites the Baer Faxt newsletter. Advisers usually buy for clients; the report does not say which. Artnet reports the bid was taken by Christie's president Alex Rotter.

The other 32 are unnamed. What is on the record:

• Monet, Iris: a private collector in Asia, bidding through Sotheby's Asia deputy chairman Jen Hua, per The Art Newspaper.
• Kandinsky and Mondrian: both went to phone bidders represented by senior Christie's staff. The Kandinsky bidder worked through the head of client advisory for the Americas, per The Art Newspaper.
• Bacon: a woman sitting in the saleroom, according to the auctioneer, per The Art Newspaper. No name has been reported.
• Journe trilogy at Christie's: one private collector bought all three matching watches for CHF 6.7 million, Christie's says.

If a credible outlet names any of them, the row will be updated and dated.

Guarantees now decide the top of the London market before the auctioneer starts. A guarantee is a promise, made in advance by the house or an outside investor, to buy the lot at a set price if nobody bids higher. The seller gets certainty. The guarantor gets a fee, or the work.

Look at what that did. The Kandinsky and the large Mondrian were both backed by third parties. The Mondrian hammered at £21.5 million against a low estimate of £20 million, and the Bacon at £14.5 million against £14 million. At Sotheby's, the de Kooning set a European record and hammered £200,000 over its low estimate, per The Art Newspaper. A record and a weak result were the same lot.

The real contests were elsewhere: the unguaranteed Monet, the Popova at more than three times its low estimate, and almost every Journe in Geneva. That is where buyers showed what they will pay when no one has set the price for them.

One opinion: read the hammer price against the low estimate before you read the headline. If they are close and the lot was guaranteed, you are looking at a financing deal, not a market price.

• Watches: Geneva's three houses sold about $203 million in one weekend, WatchPro reports. A steel Patek Philippe that made $3.29 million in 2015 made CHF 6.27 million, per Hodinkee.
• Jewelry: the Bulgari Pink, a 24-carat pink diamond held by one European family for seventy years, sold for CHF 12.1 million, inside its estimate, per Rapaport.
• Cars: a Ferrari 499P made CHF 8.2 million at Gooding Christie's first Geneva sale. The buyer cannot take it home; it stays at the factory until 2028. In Las Vegas, a 106-mile Ferrari F50 made $18.7 million, Broad Arrow said.
• Design: thin this month. One Art Deco desk from a royal residence in Paris doubled its high estimate.

Three terms, if you know finance and are new to this.

• Hammer price is the winning bid. Price with premium adds the house's fee. On this month's top lots it added between 17% and 22%. Estimates are quoted without the fee, so a price "within estimate" with fees may have hammered below it.
• Guarantee means the lot was sold before the sale. Treat it like an underwritten offering.
• Single-owner sale means one collection, one name on the catalogue. The name adds to the price. Simon, Schlumberger and Durand-Ruel all sold nearly every lot.

1. Christie's press release
2. Christie's
3. The Art Newspaper
4. Artnet News
5. Apollo
6. Observer
7. The Art Newspaper
8. Art Centron
9. Whitebank Fine Art
10. Reuters
11. The Art Newspaper
12. Artnet News
13. MutualArt
14. Observer
15. Christie's press release
16. Christie's press release
17. Observer
18. Phillips press release
19. Phillips
20. Hodinkee
21. Christie's press release
22. Time on the Move
23. WatchPro
24. Robb Report
25. Christie's press release
26. Rapaport
27. Christie's press release
28. Classic Car Auctions
29. Classic Driver
30. Broad Arrow Auctions release, via FinancialContent