My Favourite Novelty Wallets: Add Some Fun to Your EDC
Fun, functional wallets with actual personality - my top picks.
Looking for a fun or novelty wallet? Want something with a little more personality than the boring drab brown bifolds or metal cardholders with less personality than a literal piece of metal? Look, I'll hold my hands up - you only have to browse through a few of my reviews to see that the vast majority of wallets I review, and those I enjoy using personally, could be considered to fall in that 'boring' category. But that's about to change.
Today I’m going to be taking a look at some of my favourite fun wallets on the market, novelty wallets, you could say. These are defined as wallets with some creative design that transforms them into something more than just a wallet. Something with charm and personality. These wallets mentioned in this article aren’t just novelty for the sake of it, quick get-rich schemes or anything in between (I’ve not included them). These are true wallets in every sense of the word and have had the utmost innovation and creativity applied to every aspect of their designs.
1. Brown Popcorn Bag Wallet
Some designs just make me laugh out loud, and the Brown Popcorn Bag Wallet is as genius as it is comical. We’ve all had microwavable popcorn, but never in my life did I think I could be rocking a wallet with the charm of a paper bag (in a good way). The Brown Popcorn Bag Wallet comes from the brand Unjust Jewelry, who produce products that perfectly describe their brand name. The dreamlike nostalgia, Frutiger Aero aesthetic, and bold vibrant designs – visiting their website is a trip in every sense of the word (I especially like their Skype Fragrance. Who the hell knows what that’ll smell like).
Back to the popcorn bag wallet. This wallet is perfectly designed like a microwavable popcorn bag. You know the ones: the brown paper bags. What’s ingenious to me is that it doesn’t just have the look, feel, and branding of one, but it actually folds the same way a popcorn bag would straight out of its plastic, with the wallet’s trifold design perfectly lending itself to this. As for features? It’s a big boy wallet, with plenty of card slots and a quick access ID slot right in the middle.
Oh, and did I fail to mention the microwave box packaging that sounds like a microwave when you open it? Yeah, something that wasn’t necessary, but they did it anyway. If only the wallet smelt of freshly popped popcorn. If only.
2. Pokémon Game Boy SP Wallet
It was back in 2003 that Nintendo released its classic Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire games, and with them a limited edition Game Boy Advance SP themed to both games. I myself was, and still am, a huge Pokémon fan, still holding dearly onto my collection of Pokémon games to this day. So when I was mindlessly scrolling Instagram and saw what was a perfect replica of my childhood console in wallet form, I was astounded – like two opposite sides of my life had collided. This is one of just a few wallets on this list I hurried to purchase, only to find it was a limited edition run of just 50. Sod’s law.
The design is genius, really. The clamshell and small square form factor of the Advance SP console is nearly identical to the classic bifold design. On the outside of the wallet is a wonderful replica of what the actual SP looked like, with either Groudon, Rayquaza, or Kyogre on the front and a perfectly colour-matched shiny leather to replicate the look of this handheld console. Not only this, but the guys at Si Je Ne Suis Pas Là have gone the extra mile, also creating a wonderful box for the wallet – a nostalgia-baiting replica of old Game Boy game boxes. The whole thing is just magical and took some serious creativity and innovation to execute as well as they did.
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3. The Error Wallet
Early noughties nostalgia is in. If you’re anything like me – mid-30s and desperately trying to hold onto any semblance of your childhood – then you’re probably going to like this one. The Error Wallet, as it’s so simply named, is a basic cardholder that perfectly encapsulates the early 2000s and what I feel was the best Microsoft operating system: Windows XP. With its Frutiger Aero aesthetic, rich deep blue colours, XP was a real trip in design, and the Error Wallet doesn’t just elicit nostalgia in its purest form but pokes fun at the myriad of error messages that basically read like a foreign language to the majority of us.
The wallet is printed with the classic error message box with the simple text “random error just to annoy you”. Its genius is subtle. The wallet has 5 error boxes overlapping each other – a little Easter egg harkening back to the so-called classic “ghost window” effect (see here if you don’t know what I mean). As a wallet, the Error Wallet has 4 slots for a number of cards, is made from vegan leather, and is ultra-thin for the minimalist in all of you. Long live Windows XP, and Vista can go **** itself.
4. Micro SD Card Holder
I consider myself a bit of an amateur photographer, not a very good one, but one nevertheless. So when I first discovered the Micro SD Card Holder by tern®, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my entire drawer of the things, most just waiting to be lost. The Micro SD Wallet is one of those situations where I just thought “how didn’t I think of that?” and has really got me looking at random everyday objects to see if they’d be a great fit for a wallet (with little success so far).
It’s pretty simple to describe this wallet, it’s a massive SD card in all its storage capacity glory, even packaged like one to a scarily accurate degree (in a good old blisterpack). The wallet itself is ultra-thin, comes in at just 97mm by 74mm, and has a capacity of up to 4GB – so I mean 4 cards. Probably my personal favourite wallet on this list based on how well it’s done, and something I’ll be picking up myself soon. The wallet comes in at a price tag of $60, quite high compared to other wallets on this list, but can you really put a price on novelty?
5. Burger Wallet
Etsy is known for a lot of things: handcrafted goods and a variety of talented individuals from across the globe producing unique items. But what I didn’t expect to see on the platform was a burger. And not just any burger, but one that to the untrained eye looks good enough to eat, yet can comfortably store a small fortune. To me, this wallet is one of those “awful taste but great execution” moments (popular on Reddit), and I’ve included it here just due to the sheer audacity of its creator.
I joke, really. The design is infectiously cute and very well done, with the burger patty acting as the actual bifold where your cash and cards are stored. It looks to be made from beautiful material with meticulous stitching, with every individual layer of the burger handcrafted with great detail (I especially appreciate the lettuce layer). Overall, although I love the design, I can’t really see the wallet being something enjoyable to use simply due to its odd circular shape and obviously larger-than-life size. But for what it is and what it set out to do, I can’t fault it for that.
6. Beats & Bills: Cassette Wallet
Last year, IndieGoGo had the privilege of hosting one of my favourite campaigns of the year. If you’re unaware, IndieGoGo is a crowdfunding platform that allows creatives and innovators to get new ideas and products funded through what is essentially community fundraising. As a self-proclaimed nerd and lover of all things analogue tech, I was delighted to see someone had designed a wallet that perfectly resembled the style and exact size of a compact cassette.
But what’s awesome about what the guys at Beat & Bills have done is it’s not just design-centric, sure, it looks exactly like a retro cassette, but it’s also got the modern functionality of a pop-up wallet, one of the most popular styles of wallets in the world at present that utilises a lever that automatically pushes or cascades your cards outwards for easy access. A very thorough, clever and attractive design for anyone who loves a bit of retro nostalgia in their lives.
7. Batman (Superhero) ID Wallet
Probably one of the cleverest wallets on this list, and that’s simply down to its damn right simplicity. Like a lot of the wallets on this list, I first found the so-called Superhero ID wallet on Instagram, and its humorous use of a card nearly everyone carries with them, your ID or driver’s licence. You see, without this, the wallet’s novelty doesn’t exactly work. What am I talking about? Well, a perfect cutout on the leather, in the case of the image above, Batman, means sliding your driver’s licence or photo ID card in the front humorously turns you into Batman, or a whole range of different superheroes including Spiderman, Deadpool and even the Ninja Turtles. It’s such a simple idea, but it quickly went viral on social media, sold out immediately and now has become a design to copy, with loads of different people and brands replicating its simple but effective design. Because of this, it’s hard to recommend a single place to purchase the wallet.
The guys at Hero ID produce it, but I’d be lying if I could confirm these were the first to do so or produce the best quality version of this wallet. On other websites, as I said earlier, you can find examples of not just Batman but other superheroes, including a similarly named website called Hero ID Wallets. I’m telling you this just to warn you that there are lots of these going around, created by many faceless brands that are just jumping on this bandwagon. Just shop around and make sure you’re not taken for a ride.
8. The Novel Book Wallet
The novel book wallet is, well, a novel idea, and one that first found fame back in 2022 with a successful Kickstarter campaign that saw the new brand raise just over $250,000 in funds to produce the wallet. These wallets, as the name suggests, are a range of wallets designed to look like old books, mainly novels of classics including Pride & Prejudice, Dracula and Frankenstein. The brand favours old books as they’ve all entered the public domain, but it’s the rustic, antique, classy look that these old book covers have that really sells it to me, down to the impeccable printing and lovely range of colour options.
As with the likes of the Gameboy wallet mentioned earlier, the idea of this Novel Book wallet lends itself to the bifold style, which opens just like a book would. Open the inside and suddenly you have a pretty great-looking wallet. Thin, capacity for 6 cards, a myriad of bills and even coins if you’re so inclined. Made from a combination of vegan leather, it’s its outside that really sold it to me, being made from cloth on hardcover just like an actual book, really adding to the charm. If you’re a big reader and want something that showcases that side of your personality - go for it - the Novel Book wallet is great.