Lundy: On the money Comments
Arrived at work Friday morning to find in my emailbox the following offer from the Rawlings sporting goods company:
Now, I haven’t bought a wallet for a long time (more on that in a minute), but $30 seemed like a lot to pay, especially as a sale price.
“Hey Karen,” I said to city editor Karen Petersen, “how much would you pay for a wallet?”
Turns out she’d just bought one, on sale, for $7.50.
When news editor Kim Jackson rolled in a bit later, I asked him the same question. He, like me, hadn’t purchased one for some time but said he’d probably top out at around $10.
“They fold up and hold money,” he said. “They don’t need to cost that much.”
I agree. And I also need to add I will likely never need to buy another wallet again in my lifetime.
That’s because over the years I’ve acquired, mainly as gifts, probably a dozen wallets that I keep in a shoebox in my closet. So when the one I’d been using for roughly a decade recently wore out, I went to the box, not a store or the Internet, for a replacement.
Favoring as I do the tri-fold style — which I realize just has two folds, but everyone calls it a tri-fold — I selected the only one of that variety left in the box. Here it is:
This particular wallet — a Velcro-sealed, Ocean Pacific model — was given to me roughly 30 years ago by a neighbor. I used it for a while back then, then switched to a different one, mainly just for the sake of variety.
When I first started using this one again a couple months ago, Karen was one of the first ones to notice it, when we went to lunch at Ciddici’s one day. I detected an amused look on her face, told her my story, and she said, “I think OP stuff is actually making a comeback.”
This morning I mentioned to Kim that I felt just a little bit funny about my retro-chic synthetic billfold, but only a little. Kim, who said he had a similar wallet when he was in high school, was completely unbothered.
“It sits in a pouch on your butt,” he said. “Who cares what it looks like?”
