The shopkeeper's trained eye had somehow picked me for a New Zealander.
I still don't know how he did it.
The 500-year-old Grand Bazaar is more than a tourist retail centre.
It is a fascinating insight into human nature and Turkish history.
One of the city's first retail markets, it has been destroyed nine times by fire and earthquake.
Today there are 3600 shops selling carpets, textile, crockery, leather goods, clothing and jewellery, but in earlier times it served a more practical purpose.
Hayrettin Dogru has been a retailer in the Grand Bazaar since 1960, working first for his father before running his own business.
Mr Dogru said initially the centre supplied furniture, household items and clothes, much of which was built at the bazaar for locals and was popular with newly married couples.
Adjacent was another market selling food and Egyptian spices.
After the 1980 military coup, other similar retail centres opened and when a civilian government came to office in 1982, Mr Dogru said, tourism and business started to flourish.
The bazaar was forced to change, and retailers started stocking jewellery, carpet, leather, textiles, shoes, silver and T-shirts for the 20 million tourists who visit the country each year.
"It's a tourist market now," the carpet retailer said.
But, it is changing again.
Traditionally, carpets have come from Iran and central Asia and have been seen as an investment, as well as a record of the lives of the incredibly skilled nomadic people who made them.
"These people don't write, use a book or pen, so how do they tell their life, their happiness, their sadness? They use design."
The carpets told their story: the animals they encountered, their culture and the highs and lows of their lives.
The wool came from their animals, the dye from plants and the knowledge was passed down through the generations.
Shops in the Bazaar are small - 12 square metres is large - but rents are expensive.
One shopkeeper said rent cost him $US66,000 a year, while shops on the main thoroughfare cost $US3 million to buy.
