What does it mean when a Monet bought in 1990 for $3.4 million returns to the market and makes $35.5 million? Maybe it means we should stop feeling sorry for those Japanese buyers who appeared to lose their shirts in the last art market boom.

Ostensibly, the Japanese buyer who bought Waterloo Bridge, temps couvert (1904) in 1990 and consigned it to Monday's evening sale of Impressionist & Modern art at Christie's in London, made a sweet profit, albeit nearly twenty years later. This time around the painting was bought by an anonymous American collector for nearly three times its estimate and remained the second most expensive Monet at auction for 24 hours. Sotheby's barely skipped off with the title on Tuesday night when an Asian collector paid $36.7 million for Monet's Nympheas of 1904, consigned by a European collector who had purchased it from the artist's son. What goes around comes around, particularly in the art world.

What was meant to be the star of the Christie's sale, a fresh-to-market Monet, Les acreaux de roses, Giverny, sold for $17.8 million, shy of its $18 million low estimate, commission included. Still, Monet helped Christie's achieve the highest total ever for a European auction this week, selling more Impressionist & Modern art in its London evening sale ($239.9 million) than in its corresponding New York evening sale last month ($236.5 million). Sotheby's sale on Tuesday brought in $159.6 million against its New York total of $278.4 million. This, compared to 1997, when the June London sales of Impressionist & Modern art at Christie's and Sotheby's brought in $22.4 million and $58.3 million, respectively.

Further illustrating how much the world has changed in the past decade, both top-selling Monets this week exceeded the artist's record at auction in U.S. dollars, but not in pounds. (The record-holder, Bassin aux Nympheas of 1900, fetched 19.8 million pounds or $33 million at Sotheby's London in 1998.)

What does it all mean? For starters, all bets are off.

-- KELLY DEVINE THOMAS