Thursday, November 12, 2009

The Antiquarian Book Market in Mexico City


It's a good one, notes the Los Angeles Times. Travel to Mexico City and there are treasures to be found, partly because most book collectors look to the United States or Europe for their books, secondly because oftentimes the bookstores owners in Mexico don't use the internet and price their books at lower prices because of it.

From the story...

You don't have to read Spanish to love these bookstores. There is an incredible range of old, odd books in English (as well as in French, German and Italian) scattered throughout the shelves. In Bibliofilia, a Donceles bookstore that specializes in rare, antique and out-of-print books, a 1960s Manual for Refrigeration Mechanics, a first edition of T.S. Eliot's "The Cocktail Party" and the 1866 "History of the United States" in four volumes illustrated with steel engravings are for sale at about a third the price of what they could fetch north of the border.

In general, the price of antique, out-of-print and rare books in Mexico City is cheap compared with the prices in the U.S. and Europe. Collectors outside the country often don't know what's available in Mexico, and booksellers here may not use the Internet to find out what prices are elsewhere. This, of course, gives the informed, or just lucky, book buyer a real advantage.

Although good deals can be found on blankets spread out along the avenues around the city, in the well-stocked bookstalls on the traffic islands in the Roma, Condesa and Coyoacán neighborhoods or at the weekly flea markets, the dozens of used-book stores lining Calle Donceles, with upward of 1 million books on sale and prices often as cheap as on the street, are still the place to go for one-stop used-book shopping.

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