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Off-beat holiday gift ideas
2007.11.28 — Culture | Technology | by BB Rodriguez
ChinaBot is fake, but there are many other gift ideas to choose from. |
The gift-buying season is here and once again you're wondering what to get that hard-to-buy for guy or gal who has everything. If you've done all your shopping at the mall and Amazon, here are some ideas you probably haven't even considered.
Specialty photos
Lots of people take photographs nowadays that they never have printed or even see in high resolution. They just sit in electronic folders, gathering electronic dust. Fotki is the best place I've found for printing high-quality photos for the least money. You can get a 16 x 20" print for just $8.50 and 4 x 6s for just 9 cents each! But 4 x 6s are lame. Go big for big impact. I got aerial photos of Disneyworld and Yankee Stadium from Live Search Maps (they don't have watermarks like Google Maps does) and got them printed at 16 x 20" for my niece and nephew. And I got my neighborhood printed at that size for myself (your neighborhood might not be available at high resolution yet).
Several sites allow you to turn your photos into fancy books for $30 or $40. Fotki doesn't offer this, but I've used MyPublisher, altho the layout options seemed a bit limited. If you use Shutterfly or another photo repository service, take a look at their options. Plus, some sites will put your photo on T-shirts, mugs, underwear, and whatnot.
A Medieval hat
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Oh sure, you can get a hat at any old clothing store, but a kickass, practical hat with a centuries-old history? I don't think so. While the ladies hats are ever-so-slightly dated, many of the men's hats are contemporary cool (I'm partial to the split-brim hat, myself) or at least retro geek chic and very appropriate for winter weather.
Custom Heraldic Designs men's hats
Fossils
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You can buy actual fossils from ages long past for very little money. Decorate your bathroom with fish fossils for $15 a piece (minimum $100 wholesale order, or get singles for as little as $30) or pick up a giant shark tooth or a pleasant fossil leaf.
Of course, those bones don't have to be fossilized to be of interest. A human skull might not seem "Christmasy" but my five-year-old nephew loves to play with my plastic skull with articulated jaw and removable top.
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Ancient coins
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For very little real money, you can buy a small collection of fascinating examples of fake money. In this case, I mean ancient Roman or Medieval coins made of tin or aluminum instead of silver for $3 to $8, or even ones made of silver and gold. Of course, for that kind of scratch, you could buy the real thing too. You don't have to be a coin collector to like these; buy two of each and frame them (back and front) on velvet as accent pieces. Or get some fake pirate doubloons for 40 cents a piece. Or give replicas of real sunken treasures for a few bucks apiece. But if you have some use for those ancient Roman prostitution tokens at Antiquarnova, I don't want to know about it.
Don't buy uncleaned genuine ancient coins. They are notoriously difficult to clean well.
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Shamrock in a frame
Pretty much anything becomes interesting and decorative when put in a little frame, not just cool coins and your own photos. Small frames with fancy mattes are cheap, so you can buy several and give a collection of framed leaves, bottle caps, old keys, pressed flowers, vintage shirts, grandma's jewelry, commemorative stamps, or—if you can find one—a four-leaf clover (you can buy them online, of course). For something really offbeat, frame a sprig of poison ivy or poison oak (wear gloves and don't get the oils on the frame!).
For a different effect, fill a shadow box completely with little toys or pasta or frame something that's so big you have to saw it down to make it fit in a shadow box, like a wheel, gear, old can, or kitchen utensil, so the frame has the effect of a close-up photograph. Imagine getting an old wheel and sawing into quarters, then framing each quarter separately. You can find all kinds of weird/old stuff on Ebay.
A box of dynamite
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You can get things on Ebay that you never imagined you could buy at all. Looking for a box to hold a treasure, on a whim I searched Ebay and found numerous wooden boxes that once held dynamite, ready to sturdily hold my treasure or your CDs or books or whatever—and at prices as low as $15 plus shipping. Or maybe you'd like a fun old manual typewriter for display or just to play with. About $20 will get you a classic. And $15 - $50 will get you an old medical bag of the country doctor type or the Army medic type—just the thing for the college kid with a retro flair.
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A giant pencil
While a giant Viagra pill might be a little pointed as a gift, there are plenty of giant things that would be fun to have around, and a really big gift is great to find under the tree. A giant pencil, for example (anywhere from $9 to $175). Or... a giant crayon ($34). Or... well, that's pretty much it, really. The giant chess set is cool, but it's expensive for the whole thing.
3-D letters
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Everybody has something to say, even if it's just to put their name on something. You can get molded plastic letters, cut metal letters, wooden letters, and other sorts from sign makers for a few dollars each. Strangely, you can get little 2 or 3" wood, plastic, or foam letter sets (with magnets on the back, no less) for just a few dollars; these are aimed at children of course. But a full set of 6" letters will set you back hundreds.
Woodland Manufacturing acrylic letters
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Movie props
These days, production studios sometimes sell off large numbers of props and wardrobe used in their movies rather than warehouse them. You can find them on Ebay and a few other sites, but be wary of replicas and fakes. On the other hand, replica props are sometimes cool enough on their own to be worth the money if priced right. The cheapest sort of props are paper money and fake newspapers and documents. You might get a random shirt worn by a castmember of last year's failed horror pic cheaper, but what's the point?
Weird crafts
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Check out Instructables for weird crafts you can make, like a lampshade made with X-rays (get them on Ebay too, or buy one pre-made) or an acid-etched copper photo. Or take a couple of cool old shirts, sew them closed, and stuff them with pillow filling.
A dress form
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Honestly, who do you know that owns a dress form? For men or women, decorative and fairly inexpensive (about $100), these shapely (well, human-torso-shaped) clothes hangers are great for prepping tomorrow's wardrobe.
Note: Apparently it's popular among amateur dressmakers to wrap yourself in duct tape, have a friend cut you out of it, and stuff it to make your own custom dress form. Did you ever imagine you would learn that?
Displayarama female dress forms
Cop boots
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Who should know better about comfortable and hardy, daily-duty equipment than cops? You might not think about police gear as available to the public, but they shop online like everybody else, only they shop for breakaway neckties and flashlights you can beat someone with. Don't ask me what "tactical shorts" are, but a nice pair of cop boots or raincoat would come in handy for any guy now and then. Here a surprise: handcuffs are remarkably inexpensive.
I once found a tie clip in an elevator in Chicago that was in the shape of a pair of handcuffs. I figured it fell off a cop's uniform, and I wore it a few times before my firm went casual. Also, check out the templates for making drawings of traffic accidents and crime scenes. They even have corpses of different sizes. Weird.
Law Enforcement Quartermaster footwear
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