Fountain Pen Shopping In Istanbul

September 15, 2012

My wife and I will be traveling to Turkey shortly to mark our 30th anniversary, and while she'd like to come home with jewelry and rugs, for me the perfect souvenir is a fountain pen or two (what else would you expect at FPN?). Online I've discovered a Turkish maker of fountain pens, other writing instruments and office supplies, Scrikss, and I'm especially interested in trying some of their products (the websites I've found are in Turkish, so if they say where you can buy their pens, I'd never know). My guess is that Istiklal Caddesi is a plausible place to look for stationery stores, and I'll start there first, but I'd welcome advice from those better versed. Any observations on pen shopping in Istanbul in general, or on Scrikss pens in particular, would be much appreciated. Thank you!

September 16, 2012

We do have some posters from Turkey, I hope they'll chime in after this bump.

September 16, 2012

My wife and I will be traveling to Turkey shortly to mark our 30th anniversary, and while she'd like to come home with jewelry and rugs, for me the perfect souvenir is a fountain pen or two (what else would you expect at FPN?). Online I've discovered a Turkish maker of fountain pens, other writing instruments and office supplies, Scrikss, and I'm especially interested in trying some of their products (the websites I've found are in Turkish, so if they say where you can buy their pens, I'd never know). My guess is that Istiklal Caddesi is a plausible place to look for stationery stores, and I'll start there first, but I'd welcome advice from those better versed. Any observations on pen shopping in Istanbul in general, or on Scrikss pens in particular, would be much appreciated. Thank you!

Your wife should be very careful about buying carpets in the city. Everybody will want to be your friend and invite you to their shop. Prices are usually 100% mark up for tourists and marginal quality. Find where they make the carpets, a co-op and bargain down. We shipped home six carpets from our round the world Silk Road trip, all double knotted hand made silk or wool. Well worth the shopping expedition but learn before you buy and drive a hard bargain. For pens I saw the big names there, Montblanc, Parker etc in the nicer shopping district, forget the name but you can't miss it.

November 12, 2012

Hello,

ı live in Istanbul as you can see. Its an old topic, but anyway. Sckrikks is a very nice and an extremely cheap brand in here. You can find sckrikks pens in almost every office supplier here. You will see them mostly next to cross and parker pens because sckriccs is the distributer of them in here. I like their products. They are mainly modern ones but not like a lamy, more like a cross pen. As i said they are very cheap, you can buy a very nice all metal fountain pen just for 35 liras, which is approximately €17. I suggest you to come to the asian site, where almost any tourist comes, because its more modern and less crowdier than the european site and its not giving an idea to the tourits that turkey is a country like india or egypt or something like that. I live on the asian site. You can find a lot of pen shops here and they are very nice shops. There is also a lot of cross, faber castel, parker and lamy pens.

I hope this helps and if you come to turkey once again, you cam find what you want.

Have a nice day.

November 12, 2012

There's a blog called "Write to me often" that has highlighted some Turkish pens and inks and the writer seems to know the pen market inside and out, beyond just Istanbul. Maybe try to shoot him/her an email?

My advice: look upon commerce as an experience to do something different. Haggle, definitely go to the spice market, eat good food, drink good coffee, smoke a nargile and enjoy the lovely, warm-hearted people and breathtaking sites. You can drive yourself crazy looking for a certain type of thing or, worse yet, a bargain. The sheer mass and layout of what's available are dizzying, and your time can certainly be better spent.

I found some great Turkish-made things, but at some point you just have to resign yourself to the fact that you won't find the best thing with limited time. Get what you're happy with and like in the moment and keep it moving.

With all due respect to the above commenter, I'd do the opposite: go for the most authentic experience, or the experience that is most different from what you're familiar with. For me, that was the bazaar style markets, where shopping is concerned. Where I live, there's a huge mall and a touristy neighborhood -- and I'd never recommend either to a traveller. You can pick up kitsch at the airport and get the mall experience near your home anytime you like (they're more or less the same everywhere), but you can't experience a foreign culture every day.

December 1, 2012

Well have a nice time in Istanbul . If you , and I would hope that you would find , take the 35 Noble series . It is all chrome well built 35 - 36 gram pen .