The 18 Gramercy Park penthouse set a Downtown record (which will be broker once the Walker Tower penthouse sale closes) when it sold for its full $42 million ask. It was also, somewhat surprisingly, the largest sale to close this year.

Who would have thought that neither of the top two sales of the year would be on Central Park? Not us, certainly, but here you have it: the Ellen Biddle Shipman house sold for almost $35 million after being listed for $48.5 million.

15 CPW always makes an appearance or two on this list, and this year is no exception. A corner 4BR closed in January for $32.5 million, earning its owners, former Lehman Brothers employees who bought the pad in 2007, a tidy $15 million profit.

This multi-terraced pad in the Rosario Candela-designed 720 Park Avenue sold quickly, and for almost the full ask, after it was listed in March.

We never even saw an interior rendering of this 9,600-square-foot triplex in The Abingdon, and, as if to add insult to injury, the buyer was shielded behind the name Hudson Heights Holdings, Inc. The Times, however, thinks that it's hedge funder Steve Cohen, who is also building a mansion on Perry Street and listed his One Beacon Court penthouse for $115 million.

Another unit in the Abingdon, one of the two penthouses, closed in May for $22.4 million after originally being listed for $21 million and immediately going into contract. The buyer is hidden behind an LLC.

Investment banker Herbert Allen got the full $21 million ask for his garishly decorated Park Avenue penthouses, selling it to an unidentified financial person.

Financial wizard Christopher Errico bought this Park Avenue pad, not his first, in July, paying $2 million less than the $23 million ask.

Business guy Nathan Milikowsky bought an 11-room apartment in the San Remo right at the beginning of the year, paying the entire $20 million asking price.

A 13-room duplex in a Rosario Candela building is never a bad thing, and this one sold to money-making-guy James Zelter for $19.5 million about a year ago, closing just after New Years.

Certainly one of the most colorful listings of the year, Broadway producer Hal Prince's surprised a lot of people for selling at not that much of a discount, despite the highly personalized decor (and that's an understatement). The buyer is shielded by an LLC.

Oh, how original: another fancy Fifth Avenue apartment sold for a whole bunch of money. And the buyer was—wait for it—the senior managing of director of an investing firm.

Another East 64th Street townhouse sold this year for $18 million, which actually meant that the seller took a loss. Whoever he or she was bought the house for $20 million after previous owner Derek Quinlan was forced to unload it after the Irish economy collapsed. It was originally asking $28 million and, oddly, was never officially pricechopped.

Just sneaking in under the wire, the 17th floor of the Candela-designed 778 Park Avenue sold a couple weeks ago for $18 million, with the sale closing last Thursday.

Eligible bachelor John de Neufville spent years having his six-story Horatio Street townhouse renovated extensively, and somewhat oddly. He sold it back in January, for a little less than $2.5 million off the $20 million ask.