The big-ticket sales may dominate the headlines, but Artsy's editorial team spent the week hunting at the other end of the price scale, publishing a six-work shortlist of the best buys under $10,000 across the 2026 Paris fairs.

Among the picks is Turkish artist Berna Dolmacı's Vikaye (2023), on view at Vision Art Platform's Asia NOW booth, with individual collages available at €4,000 ($4,489) each. Born in Akşehir in 1994, Dolmacı began by keeping visual diaries of found scraps — leaves, receipts, sweet wrappers — and now builds dense abstract compositions from discarded paper dyed with coffee, tea, henna and other natural materials. The ragged, weathered surfaces retain something of each fragment's original character. Vikaye translates as "protection" or "preservation," a fitting title for an artist who gives waste materials a second life.

The list also surfaces one of the week's more charming discoveries: Coucou Paris, the nomadic contemporary art platform conceived by Milan gallery Studiolo, returned to the Marais for its second Paris outing. Running through October 23 at 19 Rue de Poitou in the 3rd arrondissement, the intimate pop-up gathers just four galleries — proof, in the editors' view, that small packages can deliver the week's best surprises.

Published on October 22, the roundup spans Asia NOW and the wider Paris art week program, which this year unfolded under the theme of "Sentimental Value." It reads as a counterpoint to the fair's nine-figure headlines: evidence that Paris art week still functions, for those who look past the Grand Palais, as a fair of discovery.