Dealers of South Americana: An Interview with Alfredo & Gustavo Breitfeld

I ask them what they’ve brought to the fair in terms of “high-point” books, be these valuable books or simply their favorites. They respond with a litany of items, all of which are photographed and/or well described/captioned in their catalogue. They proudly exhibit to me:

Item #54-Simon Bolivar’s letter to Sucre, congratulating him on having founded Bolivia. Price available upon request.
Item #81-Document in which Cuba delivers officially
Item #82-Collection of Peruvian Watercolors, street scenes from Lima
Item #96-1st ed. of Garcia Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude, emendated with over 100 corrections by him.
Item #21-Torquemada, J.
Item #48-Torquemada, J.

After this glamorous tour of breathtakingly beautiful and historically important “high points,” we return to the here and now. They’ve talked a lot about changes they’ve instituted and seen within their own firm. What changes have they seen in terms of the direction of the antiquarian book business in general in the past few years, I ask. “Recent changes to the book business,” both of them ponder. They seem somewhat reticent to reply, but finally Alfredo digs in. “Recent changes in the book business? I think besides the internet the most obvious change has been the prices, which have risen dramatically. This is especially true at the very high end, which every year gets higher and higher. Even if the economy is not good, books maintain special prices. This is a good thing for both collectors and dealers, as it proves that books are a good investment.”

This seems like as good a time as any to ask about their own pricing. I say that I notice that many of the better items in their catalogue are marked “Price available upon request,” and I ask just how they determine pricing for a specific book or manuscript. Is it based on the somewhat traditional formula of scarcity plus condition plus importance in the canon or some other formula altogether? Alfredo bravely answers this one (a question that many booksellers routinely refuse to answer): “Yes, I’d say generally it’s what you said: scarcity plus condition plus importance in the canon. Of course we are defining a canon that didn’t exist before, so it can get kind of tricky. In terms of scarcity, we consult professors and collectors as well as the traditional bibliographies, the OCLC, and of course AE. We also have a 100 volume dictionary of the Spanish world that we couldn’t live without. But in pricing sometimes, like everyone else, we make our mistakes and sometimes we learn from our mistakes and sometimes we take profit from the mistakes of other dealers,” he chuckles.