Weighing Amex Centurion, Sapphire Preferred and Other Credit Card Heavyweights

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Obesity in America has become so bad that even our credit cards are overweight. Over the past couple of years, I've been feeling my wallet become increasingly heavy — and while that could have been because of the addition of new cards, there's also been a new trend for credit card issuers to make their cards heavier. Not to say I don't see the appeal in a nice, luxurious-feeling credit card, but who really wants a heavy wallet?!

I recently got the American Express Centurion Card, aka the Black Card, and I was pretty shocked by the feel of the card. So I wanted to see how the card that costs $10,000 ($7,500 for the initiation fee and a $2,500 annual fee) stacks up to some of its competitors. No, not in terms of its benefits and perks (although those are nice, as I recently outlined in a Travel + Leisure post), but in how much the card weighs.

So we put the Amex Centurion to the test with three other premium cards — the Ritz-Carlton Rewards Credit Card, the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card and the Citi Prestige — to see which one is the fattest on the market.

The Results

The Chase Sapphire Preferred weighed in at .5 of an ounce — not all too heavy. But the metal-made card still feels heavier than your average piece of plastic.

The Citi Prestige is by far the lightest of the four we tested out, and I applaud Citi for that because who wants a heavier wallet. For a premium card like this, it's easy for issuers to get carried away with materials. Fortunately, it weighed in at just .2 of an ounce.

The Ritz-Carlton Rewards card is by far the heaviest card of the four and if you've ever held one, that should come as no surprise. The card itself sets off TSA metal detectors! When I put the card on the scale, the metal was audible from across the TPG office, weighing in at a full 1 ounce.

And finally, the Centurion Card. Even though the card gives me automatic Gold status with SPG and could arguably be the "heaviest" in terms of its benefits, it was nowhere near the most substantial of the bunch, weighing in at .5 of an ounce — the same as the Chase Sapphire Preferred.

So, the winner of this competition — if you want to call it that — is the Ritz-Carlton Rewards card, although I'd argue the Citi Prestige is better off. Because at the end of the day, there's only so much I can carry before I'm, quite literally, weighed down. I'm not opposed to the .5-ounce cards; they're a happy medium between the super heavy and the super light. In all, I think the Centurion Card (and the Sapphire Preferred) come out winners here. Although the zero sign-up bonus on Centurion is nothing to get excited about, at least the physical card itself is.