In four years, Art Basel Miami Beach has become the pre-eminent art fair in the Americas. Launched in 2002 after being postponed a year in the wake of September 11, 2001, it drew 33,000 visitors last year, and organizers expect at least as many attendees this year. Collectors, auction-house specialists, and gimlet-eyed press wandered through the booths of 195 international galleries at the VIP opening and vernissage yesterday in search of aesthetic perfection (at a price).

“We feel it’s already a better year. We had more applicants and more projects than before,” the fair’s director, Samuel Keller, said before today’s official opening. Galleries range from New York stalwarts Gagosian and Deitch to Sao Paulo’s Fortes Vilaca and Berlin’s Eigen + Art.

The New York auction houses sold $395 million worth of contemporary art last month. Art Basel Miami Beach organizers and dealers believe collectors want to spend more.

Many of the choice deals were made at the fair’s preview yesterday. Angela Westwater of New York’s Sperone Westwater gallery said she had sold several works by Richard Tuttle, as well as pieces by Guillermo Kuitca, Susan Rothenberg, and William Wegman. A medium-size Laurie Simmons photograph sold for $15,000, while a large, recent photograph by Vik Muniz sold for $30,000. “A lot of people feel the booths look better and there’s higher-quality work,” Ms. Westwater said. “For us, it seems to have been even better than last year.”

Frank Demaegd, director of Antwerp’s Zeno X Gallery, sold two small paintings by Michael Borremans to the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles for $35,000 and $25,000, and a Marlene Dumas watercolor for $180,000. The gallery, which is attending Art Basel Miami Beach for the first time, sold only to American collectors yesterday, which was, after all, Mr. Demaegd said, the purpose of coming.

“There’s so much appetite for modern and contemporary art, collectors feel confident, and many new people are entering the field and think art is exciting,” Mr. Keller said. “They also enjoy coming to the Art Basel show because at one stop they can get an overview of what is on the market.” Miami also doesn’t lack for extracurricular activities, with overlapping parties and visits to the homes of collectors.

The entire city is awash in contemporary art this week. In addition to Art Basel Miami, there are five other art fairs taking place, as well as collectors’ open houses, displays of new public art from Mr. Tuttle and Dennis Oppenheim, and exhibitions at area museums. It is impossible to see everything in a single long weekend – which makes winter in Miami that much more like New York the rest of the year.

Art fairs have multiplied in the past five years to take advantage of the booming contemporary art market. Frieze Art Fair, which launched in 2003 in London, drew 47,000 visitors this October, and its participating galleries sold $57 million worth of art, a substantial increase over previous years. New York’s Armory Show, which was founded in 1994, had 40,000 visitors last March and cleared $45 million. The oldest modern and contemporary art fair, Art Cologne, concluded its 39th run at the beginning of last month with 70,000 visitors.

Miami’s parent fair, Art Basel, held in Switzerland in June, is still the largest and most prestigious, with around 270 modern and contemporary galleries participating. Unlike other fairs, Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach do not release total sale figures. But Mr. Keller claimed that Art Basel Miami Beach “is the biggest in America, in size, in number of galleries, in sales.”

Booths at Art Basel Miami Beach range from $10,000, at the Art Positions section of the fair – for which newer galleries fill shipping containers on the beach – to $55,000 for a doubled space. “Even with that price, we had 80% of galleries asking for a bigger space,” Mr. Keller said. More than 600 international galleries vied for the 195 spots in the Miami Beach Convention Center; 99% of the galleries from last year reapplied to Art Basel Miami Beach and almost 20% were not reaccepted.

For a young gallery, getting into one of the top fairs can be a mark of wider acceptance and recognition. “It reinforces the fact that I have a decent program,” said Los Angeles gallerist Daniel Hug, whose booth is in the Art Nova section of the fair, for galleries showing emerging artists. “Honestly, I’d probably have better sales at NADA”- the Miami-based fair focusing on alternative and emerging artists run by the New Art Dealers Association – “because the perception is it’s younger work.” Nevertheless, yesterday Mr. Hug sold a painting by Berlin artist Thomas Zipp for $15,800.

“If you start a gallery now, you’re going to sweat it,” said David Zwirner, who runs the eponymous New York gallery. Mr. Zwirner does not have to sweat it: He attends not only Art Basel Miami Beach but Art Basel, Frieze, and the Armory Show.

A gallerist such as Mr. Zwirner, who represents Chris Ofili, Luc Tuymans, Marcel Dzama, and Lisa Yuskavage, could sit in his gallery and sell all day, without ever having to crate up million dollar paintings and ship them around the world. Even before the fair, he had a collector lined up to buy the new Yuskavage painting he brought to Miami. Still, he sees uses for art fairs.” They are wonderful because they force people to make decisions,” Mr. Zwirner said. “That pressure is not unlike the auction environment. It helps people pull the trigger.”

To accommodate all the galleries coveting both jumpy buyers making snap decisions and seasoned collectors, additional fairs have sprung up around Art Basel Miami Beach. For the fourth year, Scope is occupying rooms at Townhouse Hotel, selling work by emerging artists. NADA is in its third year of collaborationist spirit. New this year are Aqua, arranged largely by West Coast dealers; design.05 Miami, a contemporary design fair launched by real estate developer Craig Robins with the blessing of the Basel organizers; and Pulse.

“The market, the gallerist, the collectors, they all seem to be craving it,” Pulse’s director, Helen Allen, said of the need for more fairs. Pulse’s booths range from $5,000 to $15,000, and galleries are invited to participate by a selection committee of six gallerists, among them San Francisco’s Catherine Clark and New York’s Ken Tyburski of DCKT Contemporary. All in all, it’s a maximalist time. More art, more fairs, more money, more sales, more parties, and more good news for Miami’s real estate agents and developers.