My wallet card

That's my wallet.

Fascinating, huh? It's a good thing we're not blogging about wallets. Our audience would be crickets.

And speaking of insects, there really are moths floating around the above wallet. You just can't see them because I'm the one who doesn't have any money. The moths are meant for only me.

The wallet is here because I am participating in Wallet Card. This is the new game announced at Baseball Card Breakdown in which you select a specific card, carry it around in your wallet for a whole year, take pictures of the card periodically and post them on your blog. I understand there might be prizes, too, but I'm not in it for the prizes. I just want to do some damage to a card with my ass.

This is a variation of the experiment conducted last year by Mark of the Mark's Not Gonna Ephemera Anymore blog. Only he put rubber bands around a stack of cards and carried them around in a shirt pocket for a summer.

I thought that was a good idea then and an even better idea now.

The key question, obviously, is what card would go in the wallet?

Baseball Card Breakdown refers to a "junk dupe," which automatically makes me think of any card between 1987-93. Believe me, I have plenty of cards from that time period to dispose of in any manner I wish. But Gavin also says the card should make you smile when you pull it out of your wallet. That's not the period that makes me smile.

So, you probably think I'm going straight to 1975, perhaps a colorful mini?

Nah. I've seen plenty of roughed-up 1975 Topps cards in my time. In fact I roughed up a number of them all by myself, long before I ever had a wallet.

No, I want my Wallet Card to be a card that is supposed to be fancy forever. Pristine. Shiny. Glowing. I want to wear that card into submission, dammit.

So here is the card:

It's a 2010 Topps Chrome Clayton Kershaw.

If you remember 2010 Topps Chrome, you recall that it is impossible to keep flat. The cards curled while still inside packs on store shelves. Any stack of 2010 Chrome curves like a tunnel. You can actually drive little Matchbox cars underneath a stack of 2010 Chrome.

Even four years after being issued, the few 2010 Chrome cards that I have left still aren't flat. And most of the Dodger dupes have been sitting near the bottom of a giant stack of doubles, still defying the laws of gravity.

So here is my chance to finally flatten one of these suckers.

Since Chrome is supposed to be fancy at all times, featured in screwdowns and grading cases and other gaudy protective devices, I'm looking forward to seeing a Chrome card treated like any card from the 1970s.

So off it goes into my wallet.

I'll be sure to take photos regularly and chart the deterioration.

By the time Kershaw picks up his fourth Cy Young Award near the end of 2015, you should have a good idea of what a beat-up Chrome card looks like.

Oh, the humanity.