Gloria von Thurn und Taxis was the “punk princess” of the 1980s, a titled German aristocrat who partied with scruffy East Village artists George Condo, Keith Haring, and Kenny Scharf. With a fortune derived initially from the centuries-long monopoly her family held on postal service in Europe, she bought work by such 1980s enfants terribles as Mr. Scharf, Haring, Paul McCarthy, and Richard Prince. Tonight she is selling off works by these artists, who have since come to define the era.

The two-part sale of works from Ms. von Thurn und Taxis’s collection at Phillips, de Pury & Company, which is estimated to bring between $5.9 million and $8.3 million, launches a full week of contemporary art sales at the house. On Thursday, following two days of sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, Phillips’s evening sale of various-owner contemporary art is expected to make between $18.8 and $26.8 million.

Ms. von Thurn und Taxis has had a friendship with Phillips, de Pury’s chairman, Simon de Pury, since the early 1990s, when he conducted a sale of property from the Thurn und Taxis estate at Sotheby’s, his former employer. They also bonded over a mutual love of the 1980s band Kid Creole and the Coconuts, which regrouped for a party at Phillips on Saturday night.

The auction house itself has regrouped, too, since being acquired by LVMH in 1999 and then unloaded in 2003. Former partner Daniella Luxembourg left the firm to become a private dealer again, leaving Mr. de Pury holding the reins by himself. And he has applied his suave and efficient Swiss savoir faire to focus the house on selling post-1980s art and 20thcentury design and photography.

“Simon really loves to have an identity around our collections and what we’re selling,” the head of the Contemporary Art department, Michael McGinnis, said. Single-owner sales such as the Thurn und Taxis collection or Baroness Marion Lambert’s photographs, sold last fall, make that easier, since they focus on personality.

Phillips is explicitly trying to brand itself as the young, fun house. “Our strategy is to be no. 1 at what we do,” the house’s managing director, Brook Hazelton, said. “We believe we’re the best for real contemporary art. The other places are strongest in postwar, 1950s, and 1960s, and we’re primarily focused on 1980s to today.”

The focus on the ultra-contemporary for the most part removes the house from competition with Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Under LVMH, competing directly with these behemoths led to money-losing Impressionist and Modern sales, which have been scrapped. And even contemporary pieces being sold this week at Phillips are priced modestly compared to the top lots at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Three Richard Prince joke paintings in the Phillips sales are each estimated at $250,000 to $350,000, while one at Christie’s is estimated between $500,000 and $700,000.

The biggest lot by dollar value in Phillips’s house’s Contemporary Art evening sale on Thursday, for instance, is Andy Warhol’s “Black on Black Retrospective” (1979), estimated at $2 million to $3 million. The Pop ironists and insouciantly scatological artists who followed in Warhol’s wake pepper the rest of the Phillips sale, which features an aquarium by Damien Hirst, estimated at $800,000 to $1.2 million, and an ornate gilt mirror by Jeff Koons, estimated at $1 million to $1.5 million.

Going after younger, greener material can have a financial upside. In general, Mr. Hazelton points out, a house would prefer to sell the more expensive piece, because it nets more for a nearly equivalent marketing and production effort. “But the reality of the situation is for the high, $5 million piece, the amount you’d ordinarily make doesn’t happen because it’s a competitive situation,” he said. In other words, if no other auction house is making a play to sell a consignment, then Phillips does not have to offer the seller a high guarantee or high reserves. “The nice thing about our situation is we’re in a position where it’s the minority [of lots] where we’re competitive,” Mr. Hazelton said.

Behind the scenes, there have been just as many changes. Mr. Hazelton himself is a new hire, brought in from Goldman Sachs’s Geneva office. And this spring the company was turned into a shared partnership, which makes even department specialists, from photography to design to jewelry, part owners. The 13 manager-partners include Mr. de Pury, Mr. Hazelton, and the department heads.

“Overall there’s a sense of pride and ownership; we know that we’re paying the bills and what we do pays our salary,” Mr. McGinnis said. “Certainly we’re all living for this place. It’s been that way since Simon took over.”

In October, the company also announced the formation of a 13-member advisory board. The members are Maria Bell, Lisa Eisner, Lapo Elkann, Lady Elena Foster, H.I.H. Francesca von Habsburg, Marc Jacobs, Aby Rosen, Christiane zu Salm, Juergen Teller, Mario Testino, and Ms. von Thurn und Taxis.

Mr. de Pury doesn’t want only advice. Members of the board will also be involved with special events – Mr. Teller shot the catalog for the Thurn und Taxis sale – and in the case of the princess herself, put property up for sale.

Highlights of the Phillips, de Pury Sales

Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis Collection (Tonight)

Jeff Koons, “Yorkshire Terriers” (1991) Estimate: $600,000 to $800,000 Mr. Koons’s ultra-kitsch polychromed wood sculpture is the most expensive lot in this sale.

Paul McCarthy, “Santa Long Neck” (2004) Estimate: $500,000 to $700,000. Mr. McCarthy’s scabrous installations of half-stripped or otherwise violated Santas are challenging. This price would be a record for the artist at auction.

Keith Haring, “Self-Portrait” (1985) Estimate: $250,000 to $350,000. Haring immortalizes himself as a shaking, wiggling dancer, arms in the air.

Richard Prince, “Why Are You Crying?” (1988) Estimate: $250,000 to $350,000. Mr. Prince’s deadpan joke paintings often aren’t that funny – or require a particularly morbid, mordant sense of humor. This one tells the story of a crying man who wishes his daughter was dead.

Anselm Kiefer, “XXI Claudia Quinta” (2005) Estimate: $200,000 to $300,000. In addition to work by New York artists of the 1980s, Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis also collected serious-minded work by such German artists as Mr. Kiefer. His leaden books are meant to represent the burdens of history.

Kenny Scharf, “The Days of Our Lives” (1984) Estimate: $40,000 to $60,000. A friend of Ms. von Thurn und Taxis, Mr. Scharf is having a mini-revival, with a recent show at his new gallery, Paul Kasmin.

Contemporary Art Part I (November 10)

Andy Warhol, “Black on Black Retrospective” (1979) Estimate: $2 million to $3 million. Warhol staged his own retrospective within a single frame as a commission by collector Bruno Bischofberger. He united Mao, Marilyn, soup cans, and electric chairs as a ghastly, ghostly silkscreen assemblage. The series is composed of fewer than a dozen paintings and this is the only black-on-black version known to Mr. McGinnis.

Roy Lichtenstein, “Reflections on Crash” (1989) Estimate: $1.2 million to $1.8 million. Like the Warhol retrospective painting, this Lichtenstein is the product of an artist looking at himself. Ben Day streaks slice across a version of Lichtenstein’s traditional comic-strip panel painting.

Jeff Koons, “Wishing Well” (1988) Estimate: $1 million to $1.5 million. Big, banal, baroque: It’s classic Koons in the form of a gilded wood mirror.

Yayoi Kusama, “Infinity Nets (White)” (1959) Estimate: $200,000 to $300,000. A Kusama egg-crate work hidden at the tail end of Christie’s Contemporary Art sale last season sold for $1.2 million, three times its high estimate. This delicate white-web painting may do just as well.

Christopher Wool, “Run Down Run” (2003) Estimate: $100,000 to $150,000. Mr. Wool’s black and white word-based paintings fit in with “the emphasis on abstract painting in today’s market,” according to the head of Phillips’s Contemporary Art department, Michael McGinnis.

Paul Pfeiffer, “The Long Count (I Shook Up the World)” (2000) Estimate: $80,000 to $120,000. Mr. Pfeiffer, who rarely comes to auction, is one of the few video artists whose work fits seamlessly into the large contemporary art market. He constructed his own armature to house his looped video of a boxing match from which the fighters have been painstakingly erased, frame by frame.