The Cavare model is a Garzini Magic Wallet that brings fun to cash carry through its infinite strap capture design. With elastic pull straps in two card slots, access is quick and easy.
(if you want to see all the features and how many cards and cash it can hold, please watch the video)
We have the Garzini Carvare and this is the caramel brown color. Neat little tray box that it came packaged in with a thoughtful presentation.
Garzini have different magic wallet models, with this one being the Carvare, which has two pull straps for top down card storage on both parts of the wallet. Regarding the “magic”, the management of the straps that cross over from one side of the wallet to the other is important to its function. From the card and cash insertion test, we got six cards in the wallet, two in each of the elastic pull strap slots and then one in each of the two interior card slots And five slips of cash. I tested it with the Euro and the 20 Euro note and lower denominations works just fine, as well as U.S. currency. Japanese Yen, not so much, as you’d have to fold it twice, which defeats the purpose since the magic portion of the wallet requires the currency to fit within the bounds of the straps. From a minimalist perspective, you could fit four cards with eight being reasonable. The company says it can hold up to 12, but with the six I inserted it began to get thick.
It’s designed in Belgium, location of their headquarters. Raw material is sourced from Spain and India, with the manufacturing all being done by two family businesses in India.
From a quality perspective, and specifically regarding the leather, it varies because due to different kinds of leathers being used, moving between genuine, top and even full grain leather. The crocodile pattern, for example, is stamped on cowhide leather. It’s machine sewn and has rolled edges, which is not uncommon for wallets and utilized depending on design. In this case, it’s very important because that’s what actually provides the pass through mechanism for the straps.
It has RFID, which is not our favorite as it’s not a real problem, but a marketing opportunity for companies.
Coming back to the pull straps, they’re elastic and the engineering is interesting. The elastic portion is anchored to the bottom of the inside slot, with the non-elastic strap material attached about halfway down. That creates the loop to capture the cards when you put them into the slot, and actually provides that pullback from the elastic. It’s really quite clever how this functions and we’ll see how long it will last with continuous use. The Garzini wallet’s main feature is the magic wallet system, and I remember seeing this functionality in small wallets about 20 years ago, and it’s been resurrected with Garzini across many different offerings. There are a couple other wallet makers that do it as well, but let’s look at the magic in this wallet.
The magic comes from the illusion of the hinges on both sides when you open and close it, which you can do continuously and from either side. When placing cash on one side and folding the wallet, it places it on the other side and straps, holding it in place. If you open the wallet again, it will appear to transfer to the other side, which it does, but not by moving the cash, but by applying the opposite straps of the wallet.
It’s priced at $55 and measures 4.25 x 2.95 x 0.4”, and weighs 41 grams. The original wallets I had 20 some odd years ago had straps made from elastic which prevented the contents from falling out because it’s held in place with the elastic, which is flexible. While not a persistent concern, there have been reports that the straps do stretch over time allowing cash to slip out of a wallet. That can happen because these straps are not elastic, they are leather and leather stretches.
Jamie Jacobs also creates a similar magic wallet but uses a crisscross strap pattern, using elastic instead of leather. We’ll do a review on that in the future. Regardless, the Garzini is a fun wallet to play with. They also sell a version that has an integrated coin pocket for those that need to carry coins. You can request your wallet to be personalized and it does come with a one year warranty.
Now onto the final score. For quality, a 3, price, a 3, features, a 4, usability, a 4, and perception, a 4. That gives us a final score of 3.4 out of 5.
The Garzini Magic Wallet is cleverly engineered, resulting in a thin pocket wallet with card sleeves. Compared to other bulky bifold wallets or money clips, this smart leather wallet is slim and light to store up to 12 cards and cash in your front or back pocket.
