Business card holders have been around since the invention business cards themselves. The original holders were elegant leather binders with either cut out inserts into which each individual card could be placed for easy viewing, or they contained plastic pages that were sectioned off and each section would hold a business card.

There are two major types of business card holders. The first kind is the type that holds business cards that are given to us. These can range in size from something that would hold 20 or 30 cards at a time to huge portfolios that will hold over 1000. They can be made in a variety of materials from leather to vinyl to even material covered books. Some are meant to be carried with us and others are meant to be left at the office.

In the late 1980s technology seemed to take away the need for these business card holders, at least temporarily. There was a surge in interest in the newly created electronic Rolodex gizmos that allowed owners to add names, phone numbers, company names, and a host of different types of notes and information. These were of course the forerunners of today's smart phones.

Of course, it didn't take long for these little devices to fall out of favor with the general public. Once people realized that technology has its own quirks, vis-a-vis crashing and losing data, all these electronic Rolodex users quickly reverted back to the old-fashioned hard for business card holders they had before.

Depending on how many business cards we had accumulated over years keep handed on how much time and energy it took to manually input the names, phone numbers, fax numbers, and addresses all these business contacts.

And as these users quickly found out, technology can only be so reliable. As these units began to fail and new information was lost, these electronic Rolodexes were quickly forgotten about and the old business holders were taken out of the desk drawers and returned to their previous status.

This technology doesn't replace the beautiful leather business card binders that many of us still like to use. There's something about being totally hands on that gives us a sense of control over our files and business data.

For all intents and purposes, these computers and PDAs have become newer versions of business card holders. However, many of us still refuse to give up our leather bound holders!