Absurd Singularity

Seeing Fe's stainless steel cloth wallet last week reminded me to start looking for a new wallet yet again. For the last couple of years I've been puttering around with "slim" wallets that I can fit in my front pocket. I started off with a black leather Guess bi-fold that looked pretty much like this. Worked pretty well, had one full-length bill pocket, an ID window, 3 single-card slots, and 2 hidden pockets. Used that for awhile before trying out my current Dopp Regatta 88 Series Front Getaway Pocket which I loved at first. However after a year or so of use there are some things I don't like so much about it. Inbetween those two I also bought a Jimi which I still use. But it's where I cram all my extra, less-frequently-used cards so it's usually in my desk drawer until I know I need to visit Costco or something.

So why am I looking for a new wallet? Well, because leather wallets really suck after awhile. They start getting too soft and wrinkly and dirty and generally just looks like crap. From a storage capacity in relation to size viewpoint, the Dopp is really pretty darn excellent, with everything that I could possibly want in a thin wallet. It has one main folded-bill pocket, a windowed ID pocket on one side (that I currently have crammed with all my transportation-related cards: bus passes, driver's license, PATH cards, MetroCard, etc.), a reasonably-sized hidden pocket on the other side (currently holding infrequently used but important to have cards: health insurance, AAA, WageWorks, etc), and then 3 single-card slots on top of that. All in a non-folding unit which is great. So what's wrong with it? Well it's leather so the edges are starting to curl (which bothers me a lot for some reason) and it's looking rather worn. Since it's not a bi-fold, the cards that you put in the 3 single-card slots are pretty much exposed to the elements so they start looking really bad on the outward-facing side. And since it's thin leather, the front of my top-most card slot now shows raised areas where the raised areas of the card that's in the slot are.

So, what am I looking for in a wallet? Definitely not leather again. Currently I have it narrowed down to either the Checkered Texture Bi-Fold Wallet w/ ID window or the BigSkinny Thin Multi-Pocket Wallet, neither of which is perfect really. I like having the bi-fold to protect the cards in the card slots from extraneous wear but my ultimate wallet would have the ID window facing outwards instead of in. That way I don't need to flip open the wallet to show the window. I'm leaning towards the BigSkinny because the 3 card slots on the left are top-down instead of right-left. Easier to get the cards in/out with the top-down layout. Doesn't hurt that the BigSkinny is $55 cheaper either. Plus I wish the steel cloth one had the double wave pattern instead of checkered. *sigh*

Anyway, I'm not in a huge rush to replace my wallet so will poke around some more I guess but I haven't run across anything yet that's better than the two above for my purposes at least. If anyone has any other suggestions, let me know.