What Leather Makes the Best Wallet?

Everyone has a slightly different opinion on this matter. There are a great deal many types of leather on this big blue marble and each of them have their own quirks.

Luckily, Anvil's been working with leather professionally for 15 years at this point, and offered a lifetime warranty on our goods that entire time. Obviously you want something tough, especially if its the type of object that's going to tossed around and thrown about. Maybe this is news to you, but it turns out bikers can be sort-of hard on their stuff. Now before there were bikers there were these old cowboy types who happen to also be real rough and tumble with the leather goods they carried. That era was tough, and a lot of those products are actually still around today. Here in Missouri we have lot of these old farm houses that have rooms that go round and round leading into each other. Chances are if you spend a little bit of time in one these farm houses, on a shelf next to Louis L'Amour westerns and dusty VHS tapes of John Wayne you'll find and old leather sheath or belt. Those items, they have a history. They were built to last.

Every year these methods used to create items with that longevity fades a little bit. Things change, times change. And that's unavoidable to some degree, you always have to adapt and grow but there's no sense in doing that without preserving the things that made something good. Our objective is to make these new wallets and belts with a care and insight that made those artifacts just stinkin' last forever. It's less wasteful, the quality is unmatched, and when you hold one of these things you can just tell that it was built tough.

When we look at the weight and gauge of certain leathers we're having to do a little tactile mathematics. Because our wallets are seldom made from a single ply of leather. We're looking for the right combination of leathers that get a certain thickness and flexibility that we know will break in well. Many times the wallets right out of the package would be considered "stiff" by most folks but years of experience as taught us that leather does not stay "stiff." If you've ever broken in a new baseball glove you'll know that it takes a little time and effort... but once that glove has been used for awhile it starts to soften up but still remains tough. And frankly, we're just talking about cowhide in that example. The sheer volume of leather types when you throw exotic leathers into the mix is unfathomable. In the future it would not be surprising to see leather that's even made in a lab. All that to be said there are a lot of choices, options, and variables that have to be considered every time we make a piece. 

So unfortunately the answer to the original question is tough. There's not a great answer other than "it depends." Every leather product that is crafted here has an optimal weight and thickness that we're striving for. We're constantly asking ourselves "Is this substantial?" because when someone gets their hands on a product that has the Anvil Customs logo on it, we definitely want their first thought to be "Whoa!"