The first wallet I ever owned was a buckskin souvenir from Canada. It was amazingly soft and fuzzy. I loved it. I was a small child, though, and never used it; it's probably around, somewhere, in a box of memories.
The photo archive starts here, with my first real wallet. It had no name but was a quality item, given to me by my eldest sister and brother in law as a wedding party gift. It lasted about 18 years, possibly because it spent its life mostly empty. A driver's license, school ID, one credit card, barely any cash; a simple life and pretty easy on a wallet. As life increased its demands, it gracefully wore out. Next came a Buxton Cardex in "oily buffalo," which cost about $15 and lasted about five years. Next was a stab at luxe, a Johnston & Murphy Slimfold in tumbled brown leather. It cost about $48 shipped, and lasted nine years almost to the day. It was replaced, not because it was falling apart (although its exterior patina had worn to a nearly shabby sheen), but because I wanted an RFID-blocking wallet. I got a wallet from Hammer Anvil, a company based out of Los Angeles, for $26 from Amazon. The wallet itself is made in India. It went into service late May 2016, and lasted nearly three years before the lining ripped. Plus, I decided I didn't want to sit on my wallet any more.
In mid-May 2019, I replaced it with an RFID blocking leather front-pocket wallet from Serman Brands via Amazon. It cost about $14 as an Amazon "Lightning
Deal." As you can see, it's very flat (this is it fully loaded)
There it is up at the top of this page. You can see two slots, one holding our FSA card and the other a credit card.
Here's the other side, showing two more slots filled with another charge card, and a couple gift cards (Panera and Target).
Inside are more slots and a money clip. On the left is the discount stack, with my San Diego Community College District student ID card and membership cards to AARP and the
Auto Club. (Me, just about everywhere: "Do you offer a student discount? How about AAA? OK, AARP?") It amuses me to have the AARP card right behind my college
student ID card. Ha! Here's something fun: According to the "Years as Member" notation on the Auto Club card, I have been a member for slightly longer than I
have been alive. This modest bookkeeping oddity is because I've been a member since birth, having been born into an Auto Club-insured family. We just added our
son to our membership, and his card says he's been a member about 2-1/2 times longer than he's been alive! Also tucked in there are my Panera Rewards card and
Five Stars reward card. There's another slot behind those slots, holding my library card and medical insurance cards for me and the kids. On the other side is
my driver's license.
There are also some dried carp scales tucked into a slot. I married into this tradition. On New Year's Eve, we have a carp as part of our traditional German dinner. The scales of the carp are cleaned, dried, and pressed flat. Then, you put them with your money, to ensure you will never want for more. Do they work? Well, when money is good I'd say that's proof they work; when money is tight I'd say I wouldn't want to risk being without them. So there you have it, another superstition upheld by the superstition itself.
The money clip was filled just for this photo; it shows far more than I actually have, being now not only a broke college student, but a broke, old college student.
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