A little over a year ago my old leather wallet died and I backed a Kickstarter for a new-fangled wallet.

The wallet seemed to be designed to carry cards and not money which was no problem because 1) my old wallet was used to carry cards and not money and 2) I was spending all my money to get the wallet and would have no money to put in it. (That’s totally like Gift of the Magi or my rewrite: I Gift of the Magi Myself.)

The wallet is from Decadent Minimalist and is designated as the Decadent Minimalist One. It is CNC machined aluminum and weighs barely more than couple credit cards. It is shaped like a U and the cards slide in and out over small bumps inside ends of the U. It holds the cards securely and even when I’ve tried to shake them out I’ve been unable to.

I bought the 12 card version—perhaps by accident, long story—and have found that to be an excellent choice. I carry my train pass, a couple credit cards, my bank card, my health card, my residence card, and a few store cards with little trouble. Even with 11 cards, I can still insert a few folded yen notes. At the Decadent Minimalist website you can buy, when they are available, money clips that insert like cards and hold money outside the case. If I’d bought the 8 card version, I’d have probably bought one of those, but they make the 12 card version much too thick. Right now it’s only slightly thicker than my old leather wallet and holds more stuff.

The DM1 with yen sticking out. The card, for Pen Addicts, is my Kingdom Note point card. You can see the scratches.

The wallet from the end.

The cards are extracted by pushing them all out slightly and then quickly sifting through them to find the one I want. This takes a little practice, but I found that once I mastered the technique, it was no worse than sorting through the crap I used to carry in my old wallet. The cards I use the most are at the ends of the stack.

The black anodizing has held up incredibly well. In fact, after several months of use I can’t find a chip or deep scratch on it. The wallet also doesn’t seem to have sprung and lost its grip on the cards. They fit as securely as they did on the first day of use.

The only complaints I have are that cards can get scratched up, even inside, as they get rubbed around. I also have to be aware of which cards are on the outside in order to protect credit card numbers and security codes. Decadent Minimalist does offer inserts that offer some privacy from wandering eyes, and others that protect against RFID scanning, but those take more space from usable cards and I was aware of these risks when I bought the wallet.

The other complaint, at least from those around me, is that I’ve developed a habit of sliding all the cards out slightly and then snapping them back into place. This creates a satisfying pop, but attracts attention as it sounds like the people that walk around snapping sticks together to warn of fire.

Maybe that means I not only have a nice wallet, but am preventing fires.