This is a good price for Brown color. The leather is water-repellent, indestructible and it smells delicious. My fav. straps are cordovan, they get patina like no other leather because they last so long.
CloacaWhile not water repellent, I believe that cordovan is very water resistant and that the underside of the strap will eventually obtain a nice patina.
CloacaFound this while researching:
"wearing the split of cordovan shouldn't be a problem. Cordovan is not leather, its sinew, and so it won't absorb sweat and stink, etc like leather will. The liner for these straps looks to be more of a nicety than anything else"
Seems logical to me...
Source: https://forums.watchuseek.com/f222/unlined-vs-lined-970198.html?t=970198
wangminzeReally good question. The strap is more comfortable unlined. I jog with my shell cordovan strap and have been for about two years. The shell is totally fine but the cordovan does absorb any liquid. You can always wash the strap with soap and COLD water but you will need to re-nourish the leather with a conditioner (like Tanner's Blend) or it will dry out and crack.
CloacaI believe most would not define shell cordovan as leather but of course cordovan is still equine leather. I think if you look at the context, The op was referring to shell. To my understanding... But my fault for not paying attention to their word choice because I was only reading for whether or not it is waterproof.
wangminzeWikipedia says: "equine leather made from the fibrous flat muscle (or shell) beneath the hide on the rump of the horse."
I don't know what they mean by "shell." I think that Cordovan is the lower layer of the hide, which is more fibrous than the top layer. There is a good illustration of this in a post I made here called "Stuff to Know about Leather Grades When Shopping Online for Straps," which you'll have to search for since I can't link on the device I'm using now.
I don't think any "leather"-like substance is made from muscle or from any non-hide muscle-covering membrane of any sort. It could be that the manufacturing process involves stripping off the hide and then a separate step for stripping off the deeper hide for Cordovan production, leading people to think it's not hide. At any rate, this "shell" concept is only spoken about online in Cordovan articles. There is nothing about it in any horse or mammal anatomy references. There are no diagrams showing Cordovan sources or production that indicate anything other than hide.
On thing to consider is that deep, fibrous hide from cows is considered trash leather and is chopped up, glued together, sanded down, and stamped with a pattern to make cheap, so-called "genuine leather." Since Cordovan is a deluxe leather, but comes from the same place as cheap leather does on cows, maybe there is a concerted effort to distinguish it from "genuine leather" by creating and propagating elaborate myths about it.
CloacaThere is no such thing as cordovan leather, there is Shell-cordovan which is one of the rare types of LEATHER made by two tanneries one in US and one in JP . Yes it is made of subcutaneous layer from the horse rump. It looks and smells like regular leather and used as any regular leather in making leather products (bags, wallets, belts, shoes etc). I have several pairs of shoes made from shell-cordovan. It is completely smooth, water repellent, and it doesn't wrinkle like regular leather. It is thicker than calf or any other leather save for elephant and it is practically indestructible. If high quality it has deep rich color and aquires deep and attractive patina.
The end.