First and foremost, thank you to everyone for a most enjoyable 2009. My wallet adventure introduced me to many new friends - artists & students, geeks & entrepreneurs - to whom I wish a most rewarding 2010.

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I’m not a machine. After completing the first batch of Atari & Sears cartridge wallets, a few weeks offline was sorely needed. In that time I realized the eBay resales need to be wound down until stock is reduced to the thousand or two of wallet-quality games set aside if the first thousand fail to satisfy demand. Resales, while only ancillary to the wallet project, is completely necessary to build & maintain wallet-quality stock. Each system takes hours to test, clean, photograph and ship, a process that no volume of monetary returns made enjoyable. It was the charitable donations that brought encouragement as we’d remove cocoons from games or scrape grime from joystick folds. While we were able to raise over $650 for charity in less than 6 months, without the resales we won’t be able to raise a fraction of that in the next six months the way things were run in 2009.

Effective immediately, $10 from every wallet sold will be donated to charity as was done with resales, split between World Computer Exchange and Child’s Play. World Computer Exchange is a global education & environment nonprofit that helps connect youth in 67 developing countries to the skills, opportunities & understanding of the Internet while keeping working computers out of landfills. If you have an old computer, please check to see if there is a location nearby to donate it.  Child’s Play is a game industry charity dedicated to improving the lives of children with gifts of toys and games in their network of over 60 hospitals worldwide. Of course, don’t hesistate to donate directly to either charity just because you did (or did not!) already buy one of my wallets. It feels good to donate. Go ahead & try for yourself!

May your 2010 be rewarding and prosperous!

For anyone that knows me, this collaboration was a no-brainer.  Unless by some strange reason you found yourself here because of my lost dog posters, you already know that I repurpose original Atari 2600 & Sears video game cartridges into wallets. The simple beauty of the wallets would not have been possible without the design guidance of my roommate, spawn-mother and wife, Phetnikone.

A Mass Art graduate in fashion design, she has been selling her handbags in Boston boutiques since 2005. Naturally, with the release of the wallets, she created a special line of wristlets to accompany my wallets. More details after the preview pictures.

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Out of all the strangeness borne of the Atari cartridge wallet adventure, the robopube motherball stands out. I’d like to say I named it, but in its presence the name cannot be denied. As the first batch of ~1200 games began the wallet repurposing process, the springs began to snag each other as I threw more into the box. After a couple hundred of springs were added to the box, the snagged mess formed itself into a round shape. By the time the entire lot was processed all of the springs had taken on a new existence.

The spring starts in a V shape with the tension loop at the bottom and both points are barbed half-circles. Multiply this by a thousand and you have a melon-sized ball of antique tetanus-bearing metal, ready to sink a jabby tip into flesh with every touch. Oh, sure, we had a hoot with it at first, but then the ugly truth became clear: one by one, each spring must be removed to be fashioned into the wallet money clips. As easily as the motherball is ready to jab it is twice as unlikely to let a piece of itself go.

Before I began the painful experience of separating the springs from the motherball, I realized if the wallets succeed and I need to process more, I’ll never have a batch as large as the one I had at that moment. The photos from that lone moment of motherball appreciation adorn the background of this website as well as my twitter profile picture.

I’m not a machine. I don’t want to be a machine, either. They’re too needy, asking too many questions. Can I open this, where should I save this… the questions never stop.

Unlike the questions, I do stop, but not often. Between the full-time day job, the baby, wallet construction, eBay resales and dodgeball, the blog somehow became lost in the shuffle. Instead of writing a ton of crap,I’ll simply summarize the wallet news…

I’ve been working with a group of students for marketing, including a live-action commercial to be filmed this weekend with a Ms. Pac Man costume. Another batch of wallets will be ready this weekend as I begin inserting magnets into the next batch, which includes the big names like Asteroids, Combat, Pac Man and Space Invaders. Atari cartridge wallets will be combined with custom wristlets designed from the included game in a collaboration with Phetnikone Nokham. You can click here to preview the first wristlet, Berzerk.

Time to go match chips up with their newly-finished wallets.

That quote sums up how I got here. “Can I ask a favor?” is probably the most cringe-inducing phrase my friends can hear after the past four years, as every time those words passed my lips dreams of a molehill faded into mountains. Without having a large bankroll to start with - or no bankroll, as was the wallet project has been - meant spending hundreds of hours to find alternative methods to achieve the same results. No matter how creative I could be in making the most with so little, this project was not possible without a small army of friends & family helping me out. To all you Underhills who have made my wallet dream a reality, this post is for you.

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