“This whole year has been a big readjustment, a much-needed one, like a chiropractic session,” said Timothy Blum, co-owner of Blum & Poe Gallery in Los Angeles, New York and Tokyo. “It can hurt, but you come out on the other end better than before.”

Scott-Douglas’s untitled canvas, one of several resembling a sheet of blueprint grid paper, is estimated at $18,000 to $22,000 at Phillips’s “New Now” sale. The work was part of the artist’s sold-out exhibition at Blum & Poe in 2013, when it garnered $25,000.

‘Drunk’ Traders

Kantor acquired the work privately in July 2014. Four months later, a similar piece from the series went for $100,000 at Christie’s. Kantor expected the prices to keep surging, but in February 2015 another canvas from the same series failed to sell at auction.

“I feel like we were a little bit drunk and didn’t think of the consequences,” he said. “Then the bottom fell out. Everyone got stuck with their pants down.”

Before consigning his piece to Phillips, Kantor tried selling it privately for a year -- through Blum & Poe, the work’s former owner, even on EBay. At one point he was asking $50,000 but couldn’t get an offer.

“There are certainly some cases where people have paid more at the height of the market,” said Rebekah Bowling, head of the Phillips sale. “We are in a market where we have to be conservative. Everyone is very price conscious.”

As a result, auction estimates often not only are down from the heyday, but also below primary market prices. At Phillips, more than half of the 204 lots are estimated below $10,000.

Still, dealers representing Scott-Douglas in the U.S., the U.K. and Hong Kong say they continue placing his newer works through the gallery market, which is more stable. His collectors include billionaires Francois Pinault and Eli Broad as well as Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.

“No one is folding tent because auction prices have declined,” said Casey Kaplan, whose gallery is opening the artist’s solo exhibition in New York next month. Prices for fresh works by Scott-Douglas range from $25,000 to $80,000.