Birth of the Wallet

Since at least the days of ancient Greece, human beings have carried portable storage containers for their belongings. A British scholar named A.Y. Campbell deduced from classical texts that many impoverished ancient Greeks would carry a sack called a kibisis. The kibisis might today be considered a proto-wallet, only it held food instead of money - snacks to be consumed during times of emergency.

The Renaissance, the period of European history spanning the 1300s to the 1600s, was when metal coins came into prominence. Not coincidentally, it was during this era that people began putting money into their knapsacks. At first, however, only merchants transported money-filled knapsacks; they'd tie these sacks to their belts. And sometimes merchants carried account books inside these sacks as well. The word "wallet" was first used to refer to these sacks during the late 1300s.

The Wallet from 1600 to 1900

In the American colonies at the end of the 1600s, wallets made from horse and cow leather began to replace the drawstring purses that had previously been used. Colonists would keep paper currency, newly invented, inside these wallets, as well as pieces of identification called "calling cards.

By the 1800s, wallets were common throughout Europe and the United States. Spaniards often kept everything they needed for a smoke - including steel, flint, and a dried vegetable material to light up - inside their wallets. At this time, however, people usually wore wallets on their belts. Indeed, the notion of keeping a wallet inside a pocket would have seemed strange, and would not have been socially acceptable.

The Modern Wallet Takes Shape

Victorian Age wallets were simple affairs. At that time a wallet would only include a single compartment for a small quantity of cash. When the credit card was introduced in the 1940s, however, it led to a fundamental change in wallet design. People obviously needed to bring their credit cards with them whenever they went out, and by the early 1950s wallets began to reflect that need; wallet makers began including slots to hold those cards. And wallets were now more flexible, too; they could be folded twice rather than just once.

During the 1970s, Velcro-fastened wallets became a hit. Another major wallet development occurred in 1996, when the All-Ett billfold company introduced wallets that were approximately fifty percent smaller than the average wallet at the time. All-Ett continues to sell the thinnest wallets on the market. Modern wallets come in every color, design and material imaginable, and can have any number of useful features.

Wallets Now and Forever

They say that history never stands still, and that's certainly true of the wallet. Today wallets come in a digital as well as a physical form. For instance, in 2011 Google debuted the Google Wallet app. It's a mobile payment system, allowing customers to store things like virtual credit cards and gift cards on their smartphones instead of keeping "hard copies" of these items inside their physical wallets.

Mobile commerce aside, almost everyone still has use for a high-quality, rugged, reliable wallet - the Ball and Buck Flap Wallet. This hand-cut, tanned-leather masterpiece is both timeless and modern, and should keep the physical wallet around for generations to come.

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