Pelikan

Pelikan Hub Bremen 2024 Preview

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After Hamelin’s acquisition of Pelikan last year, there have been some changes, including the announced closure of Pelikan’s sales and distribution locations in Hannover and near Berlin.

We’ll have to wait and see how Pelikan’s long term future will look like, but in the near future, we certainly have the Pelikan Hub to look forward to. I was lucky enough to be able to act as the Hub Master for Bremen again. As I am more familiar with Bremen by now, I found a more central location for the Pelikan Hub: Vegefarm, a Taiwanese, vegan restaurant that has kindly agreed to let us hold the Pelikan Hub there this year.

Looking forward to seeing all Bremen participants there on 27 September and also wishing participants of the other Hub locations a great time.

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Pencil prank & Pelikan

2 Comments / Pelikan, Seen in the wild / / , ,

I couldn’t help but notice the pencil on the cover of the latest Beano issue. Well, I say the latest issue, when actually it was four issues ago because my son’s subscription is slow to arrive here on the continent. At least you can still subscribe to The Beano here. The Phoenix stopped their subscription to EU countries altogether because of issues with delayed and missing deliveries and they don’t offer a digital subscription either.

In case you’re wondering what the pencil prank is, have a look here:

On a different note: registration for the Pelikan Hub 2024 is open. You can register here: https://www.pelikan-hubs.com/

I hope to be able to run a Pelikan Hub again. As I am more familiar with my ‘new’ city, I have a better idea for the location this year.

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Posh pens in a supermarket

5 Comments / Carrefour, Pelikan, Seen in the wild / / , , ,

Most of us only know the really expensive fountain pens [1]Not sure where to draw the line here. Maybe at €200 plus? from the Internet. No wonder – unless you live in a very big city or close to a specialist stationery store you probably don’t have much chance of seeing them in real life. It’s understandable that many shops don’t stock really expensive pens: they might not sell, so would end up just tying up money that could be used to buy other goods that sell faster.

I am wondering if shops with enough turnover can sell expensive pens on commission / don’t have to pay for them until they sell them. If you know how this works, please leave a comment. The fact that you don’t see expensive pens often makes me think that this is not the case.

With this in mind it came as a surprise to see not one, but three €2,000 fountain pens at a supermarket in Bremen. OK, I admit, that it is not a normal supermarket, but a rather unusual one: It is not part of any of the common German supermarket chains and there is only branch, i.e. it is not its own chain. It’s called Lestra and is a normal, but posh, supermarket that sells milk, bread, butter, cheese, meat – and has a small but very special stationery aisle.

In the top row of the shelf in the next photo you can see Pelikan’s Silver Screen fountain pen (€1,950) from 2009 (limited edition of 420 pens), Pelikan’s Herzstück fountain pen (€2,500) from 2019 (limited edition of 462 pens) and Pelikan’s Temple of Artemis fountain pen (€2,750) that is part of the Seven Wonders Of The World Series and was released in 2006 (limited edition of 440 pens).

As you can imagine this was a very unexpected discovery. Next time I visit I’ll look what other unusual items are there to be discovered.

References

References
↑1 Not sure where to draw the line here. Maybe at €200 plus?

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Alsterhaus in Hamburg

7 Comments / Seen in the wild / / , , , , , , , ,

A recent family trip to Hamburg [1]which was my first ever trip to Hamburg included a trip to Alsterhaus, a posh department store that very much reminded us of Harvey Nichols in Manchester.

Excuse the wide angle distortions of the photo but because of construction work I couldn’t move further away

The Alsterhaus sells many posh brands (think Armani, Chanel, Hermes, …), but unexpectedly we also found an extensive selection of stationery brands on one of the higher floors.

Some brands, like Graf von Faber-Castell, S. T. Dupont and Caran d’Ache take up large parts of the stationery corner’s luxury corner, but pens from other brands, like Pelikan and Kaweco, are also in stock.

Despite Alsterhaus’ general focus on luxury brands you can also find affordable stationery items for office and school use.

This includes a great selection of Lamy pens.

Faber-Castell, Leuchtturm and more were also available.

Thanks to my wife I walked away with Caran d’Ache’s Nespresso pencils (more about them at Pencil Talk) and my first ever “Les crayons de la maison” pencils (more about them at Lexikaliker, who discovered that this series is not quite what it is made out to be).

Prices were comparable to what you pay for these items in other shops or online.

This set seems to be the tenth edition, created together with Mizensir, a Swiss parfume firm.

When opening the plastic wrapping you can smell the strong smell from these pencils.

At this stage it is not completely clear whether the different pencils have different smells that are indistinguishable because they were together in sealed packaging or whether the different pencils have the same smell by design.

References

References
↑1 which was my first ever trip to Hamburg

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Pelikan Hub Bremen

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After recently moving from the UK to Germany, this year I was involved in the Pelikan Hub Bremen, rather than the Preston Hub that used to be my home hub.

The Pelikan Hub took place in a Greek restaurant in the North of Bremen. The location was chosen as it was close to public transport and also offered a big car park.

Some numbers linked this Hub: Unfortunately, three of the participants who signed up didn’t take part. There were also another three people who didn’t sign up but wanted to come along. In the end, however, they couldn’t make it. That left us with five participants which means that this was probably one of the smallest Hubs…

Despite the small number of participants I enjoyed the Hub very much. I wonder how long other Hubs went on for. This one lasted around four hours.

Thanks to Pelikan the participants got bottles of the ink of the year, nice notebooks and postcards.

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