I had a look at 6 southern lists to see which objects were the most popular.
http://www.seds.org/messier/xtra/similar/similar.html
1. Lacaille's "Catalog of Nebulae of the Southern Sky" 1751-2
2. James Dunlop's Catalog of southern Deep Sky Objects. 1826
3. The Jack Bennett Catalog of Southern Deep-Sky Objects
4. John Caldwell's Best Sky Objects from SAAO Latitude. (South Africa)
5. 110 Deep-Sky High Lights
6. Hartung (2nd ed) southern extension to the Messier Catalogue, p416.
I did not include Messier objects from the catalogues.
The 35 NGC objects below were in 4 or more of the above 6 lists.
NGCs 55 104 253 300 362 1291 1316 1851 2070 2477
2516 2547 2808 3114 3201 3242 3293 3372 3532 3766
4755 4833 4945 5128 5139 6025 6231 6388 6397 6541
6744 6752 7009 7293 7793