Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) When leather is actually plastic...?

Had some Xmas present money burning a hole in my pocket so thought I'd make the most of the MMC January discount and ordered a Leather Document Wallet from their on-line shop to replace the OEM one which is obviously 'pleather' / vinyl.
Had a choice of Yarwood or Muirhead leather so went with black Yarwood with the MMC logo in silver.

Now I'm no expert but I hope I know what leather smells and feels like and what I've received today definitely smells of chemicals and feels to me like plastic when it should be 'high quality leather' especially at that price In fact, it looks and feels to be exactly the same as the one I've already got!

Now as clever as the internet is, I know that you can't smell or touch it but from the photo's I would welcome your collective wisdom. Does this look like leather before I politely ask for what I paid for?

Is it leather stitched onto a backing sheet to give durability?

I have a range of leather offcuts and none are more than a couple of mm thick. The back is suede.

Dave, you can see from the flap in the lower photo how thin the black 'pleather' is. The white flecks that you can see on the cut sides of the wallet seem to form the backing to this and then there is a thin black spongy type material in the inner layer.

Apart from the 'leather' that never surrounded a cow, not all real leather is up to the old standards. Anthony Hussey, whose favourite family joke was "My father was a Hussey, and my mother was a Connolly, which is better than the other way around", had an excellent expression for the lower-quality stuff: "paint with a leather backing". Connolly always maintained its tradition of as natural a finish as possible. Sadly it exists no more.

Looking at the one that came with my car in 2015 from Morgan and comparing it to several other makers ones I have that look like leather but are not - VW and BMW - I think it is genuine leather and not plastic.

I’m no expert so I can’t tell from the photos but could it be bonded leather which is made from real leather scraps layered and bonded with polyeurathane (a bit like making paper) then embossed with a leather looking grain?

Technically it does contain real animal hide but I’m not sure what the poper description is and whether it can be called ‘real leather’

Try testing a small part of it with something hot , plastic will melt leather will not .

A friend of mine who is a saddler tells me that he now finds it impossible to tell what is "genuine" leather due to the many variables and different thicknesses, various bondings and reconstituted stuffs.

Plastic coated suede meets the legal definition for leather, that’s the trim you get in your average tintop. Morgan, Rolls Royce, Bentley etc. use hide. Different stuff.......
I was under the impression that the document wallets were made from the offcuts from the trim shop but maybe not? 🤔

This exactly. I know that the 'leather' in my BMW just about scrapes through within the definition of the word having a very minimal animal hide content.
I think when I get time I'll take it to the trim guy at my local dealer and see what he thinks.