(if you want to see all the features and how many cards and cash it can hold, please watch the video)
If you like sports, wouldn’t you want to incorporate the leather from those sports into your wallet? Whether it is baseball glove leather or football leather, as we have seen previously with other wallets, or leather used from basketballs. If basketball is your game, then the Lotus & Layne Canyon Basketball wallet is your choice.
This wallet comes in a box, in a bag that is surrounded by tissue paper. It has a wonderful little key chain and the leather is amazing, you would think we have a basketball, because, well, we do. This is basketball leather and Horween makes all the leather for basketballs and footballs. The color is orange as you would expect, but being a basketball, what else can it tell us?
It is a simple wallet, something we would rather have instead of a very complex wallet. It has four card slots, three slots plus the main compartment. It can hold up to a capacity of eight cards plus cash folded twice. I would imagine that one would put cash on the inside or in the back. Personally, I probably would use the back for a tap pay. Although, if you have cards out there, then they will get exposed. The card in the front, especially, will get worn more quickly than the ones behind it. Watch the video for more details on how it looks and a quick illustration of how the cards are exposed.
From a dimension perspective, this wallet measures 4 x 2.8 x 0.4” and weighs 51 grams or 1.8 ounces of Horween leather goodness.
Wrap wallets are a favorite design for many companies, including those from Craft & Lore and Mitchell Leather and we have seen wallets made from old footballs and baseball gloves. So using basketball leather made by Horween is actually very cool. This is designed and made in the United States from a full-grain vegetable tanned Horween basketball leather, as I mentioned. The cards fit in and go in rather nicely. There is a lifetime stitching guarantee, but I noticed that it could have some reinforcement issues. It begins to pull away the stitching, especially at the top, with very little force. I would have liked to have probably seen some double stitches at the most sensitive places. Nevertheless, there is a lifetime guarantee on it. The edges are painted in a kind of rough burnishing that is not smooth or anything as such, but it is a nice color. I like the black because it provides a great contrast, since we have black in the ridges around the basketball, that makes it look quite attractive.
I like the stance of this wallet as it provides a broader opening at the top than most. Many are very flat to begin with, but as you begin to add cards, it begins to stretch and close. Furthermore, even with it looking like we have a gap, cards are not going to be coming out, it is held snugly on both sides. It will develop a very nice patina and it will flatten the base at the top as it goes along. It fits nicely in your pockets, without any problem.
I like the modern design of the swoop, which I think looks really nice and quite cool. With the two pieces of leather that are used to wrap around, it just provides a nice tactile feel, obviously, because it is a basketball and interesting on top of that. It does have a couple of misses, but the texture of the wallet and the flare as well as the design make it a great wallet.
The final score of Lotus & Layne is 4 for quality because the stitching is a bit lacking, but otherwise, it is a great wallet; price scores 2 since similar wallets are going for almost a third of the cost, and basketball leather is not that expensive; features score 3, it does what it should; usability score 4, as I think it is very easy to use and I love some of the small design elements in there. With 3 for perception, this basketball leather wallet gets a final score of 3.4 out of 5.
Unfortunately, Lotus and Layne has ceased business operations. Below is a close comparison.
New and improved Wally Pull-Tab™ gives you instant card access, then auto-retracts in a flash.
