The Pulgas is at Dorrego y Niceto Vega, in Palermo Hollywood.
its a fixed market, open 6 days a week, and the vendors have permanent spaces. Its primarily furniture, although there are a few specialists in china and glassware, one lady who has antique textiles, and a couple of knickknack vendors.
The neighborhood around the pulgas has a lot of antique stores as well. And usually they are cheaper than the ones on Defensa.
here is the city web page on ferias-
http://www.buenosaires.gov.ar/areas/cultura/parair/paseos.php?menu_id=11229
It really depends on what you are looking for.
For more unusual, higher end antiques, I do think the San Telmo sunday market is pretty good. The tourists actually only buy cheap crap, mostly- the higher priced stuff is usually sold to Argentine collectors- for instance, there is one dealer who specializes in art deco and 40's jewelry, which is small and subtle. Its a good place to find name designer craft jewelry from the 50's as well- there is a well known Argentine jeweler, I forget her name, who does big chunky modernist sterling silver stuff, very collectible, and there are a couple of dealers at San Telmo who often have it. I collect miniature anvils and pinguinos- and good ones of both are pretty rare, but almost always present at San Telmo. Not Cheap. But where else you gonna find a whole booth of 40's and 50's designer handbags in perfect condition?
I like the Parque Centenario, and the nearby Parque de los Andes ferias, (Parque de los andes is Corrientes y Jorge Newberry, Dorrego stop on the B line) which are on weekends, for more mundane, garage sale stuff- seldom will you see the really killer high end pieces there, but prices are better, and the mix of old and new, trash and kitsch and used heavy metal LPs and new incense and leopard skin G strings is a lot of fun.
I never see tourists at either one, so I kinda doubt they are "tourist priced".
As a 40 year long maker of crafts myself, I gotta say I am less than bowled over by either the plaza Serrano or the Recoleta Cemetary ferias- bad hippy crafts, with the rare innovative quality maker.
There are tiny antique stores everywhere in the city, and, often you find amazing stuff in them. Prices vary, up to a point- but its hard to find somebody who is giving away gold, or diamonds, and most antiques that are actually valuable tend to have baseline prices, and then Recoleta or Defensa multipliers.
Certain antiques in argentina sell for as much, and sometimes even MORE than world prices- Good knives, for example, quality antique fountain pens, and so on. The real deals are on heavier items that tend to not get taken on airplanes- big furniture, chandeliers, stuff like that. But foreign collectors have discovered Argentina- I was at a friend's antique store a year or so ago, and he was packing up a container for a Russian Ogliarch, who had bought an entire castle, unfurnished, in Latvia or Estonia, and was buying huge amounts of antiques here- I heard 30 to 40 glass chandeliers, dozens of chairs and tables, shelves and chests. Every major antique dealer in town was cashing in. By euro standards, that kind of thing, even at the expensive stores, is dirt cheap here.
It's pretty cool! But as Ries said, there isn't necessarily a lot of "high end" stuff, and she's right about the antique jewelry being in San Telmo.
