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50s to 90s In Focus Interesting

The Pen Specialist

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Thursday night I passed by the Souk Al-Mubarakiya Festival for the second time to meet up with a friend and while taking a shortcut to avoid the crowds I ended up passing by a very unique pen store. It didn’t look like much from the outside but something caught my eye and I ended up walking in.

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The store, not very big maybe 3×4 meters was just covered wall to wall with displays filled with pens and just two brands, Parker and Shaeffer. I was in awe, the displays were filled with a lot of intricate items, like they’ve been gathering up over the years and I had so many questions but the shop keeper was with a customer so I waited overhearing the conversation. The shop keeper was telling the customer how the Parker pen he was buying was made in the USA and was from the last series that was produced in the States back in 1984.

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Once the customer left I started talking to the shop keeper who was called Gomes. According to Gomes the store originally opened back in the 50s but he had been working at the store since he came to Kuwait in 1977. It used to be located in a different part of the souk but that building had gotten demolished and they had moved into the current store in 1988. The store still contained a lot of old stock or in other words, vintage pens. Gomes had taken it upon himself to display some of the most vintage pens in the display cases with little hand written notes (in a beautiful handwriting I must say) about the pens. Over the years he’s also collected trinkets from here and there and he kept adding them to the display cases and now they’re all full of random objects that add so much character to the store.

I told him how much I loved the store and how I had been coming to the souk since I was a kid but how I never m
noticed the store even though it was on the main road. I didn’t buy anything since I was on my way to meet up with my friend but I did promise him I would come back. If anyone is interested in visiting the store it’s located across from the Green Land vegetarian restaurant in Souk Al-Mubarakiya. They’re open from 8AM to 1PM and then again from 4PM to 9PM and the store is called Al-Muneefi. Here is the approximate location on [Google Maps]

19 replies on “The Pen Specialist”

Well they have been there since before there were malls, and before there were souks like Salmiya or Hawalli. And if you think about it, Souk Mubarkia back then was what Avenues is to us today.

sorry for being off topic, but the new additions to your site looks cool.
Im glad that I longer need to browse through the “FORUM”, We have a proper market place. Thanks!!!
Personals ? hehe

its so good that you meet so many interesting people who are just timeless normal guys and are having so many stories embedded in them .

Thanks for this Mark

just to provide a more accurate location the shop is on the entrance opposite to Ahli bank and where Shater Abbas restaurant is on your left, keep straight few shops and the pen shop would be on your left. they have new old stock (unused fountain pens) back from the 1930s.

Gomes is the specialist to fix whatever pen you have, especially vintage

in-case your lost just give them a call : 22416105

Wow, just yesterday i saw an episode of Almost Human where they were in awe of a Pen, like its almost never used, i seriously think we are heading in that direction with computers/smartphone in our face 24/7.

Really cool shop, would go there soon. Feel like writing πŸ™‚

Hi,
Just checking up in 2019 if the store still exists? I am a pen collector from India and keen to add to my collection. Anyone know how the prices are?

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