Unique Gifts Under $100

The one problem with the big, beautiful art books that so many of us love is that they're physically difficult to read. This elegant bookstand from Assouline solves that problem in style, holding your books for both reading and display. 

Tyler Cole VP, Community

I know it looks kind of like an alien toilet, but this cup is actually modeled on the bizarre zero gravity–friendly design of cups used on the International Space Station. Drink like an astronaut!

Eric Grundhauser Senior Producer

The perfect gift for your favorite member of The Finer Things Club, this “Anecdotal History of Elegant Delights” covers everything from Aerostation, i.e. the art of hot air ballooning to Xiguo Jifa, the art of memory.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

Fire and (what looks like) ice together is an irresistible combo, with a reminder of the work we still have to do.

Yes, a stainless steel letter opener might be overkill, but goodness what a gorgeous object. Made by the precision manufacturers at Craighill, a small, Brooklyn purveyor of distinct home goods and accessories.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

Is it true that NASA spent millions of tax-payer dollars to develop a pen that didn't rely on gravity while their rival Soviets simply used a pencil? No, but it is true that this pen is one handsome and well-designed writing implement.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

This otherworldly collection of Soviet space-race graphics takes readers on a cosmic adventure through Cold War-era Russia.

Winnie Lee Visuals Editor

A hilarious and practical guide by the creator of Dinosaur Comics and writer of Adventure Time, Ryan North! In just 464 pages, you'll learn how to quickly replicate humanity's achievements, just in case you ever accidentally get sent back in time.

Larissa Hayden

A beautiful book written by Dan Barasch, the Co-Founder of the Lowline with a forward by Atlas Obscura co-founder Dylan Thuras, Ruin and Redemption in Architecture offers an extraordinary portrait of monumental abandoned spaces around the world and explores the possibilities to radically transform them.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

Sturdy and squat, the Brown Betty teapot is a British classic. This redesigned take is the result of years of research by ceramicist Ian Mcintyre, who reincorporated long-lost features such as a no-drip spout and a locking lid. 

Anne Ewbank Senior Associate Editor, Gastro Obscura

"Unexpected, delightful, magical, and utterly cool!" — Sascha West, Vermont

At first glance, gallium looks like any old metal, but drop it into your hand and it will melt into liquid from your body heat alone.

No, it won’t keep perfect time, but this laser-cut wooden clock is a lot of fun to build. And even more fun to show people

Joshua Foer Co-Founder

In the recent past, owning a copy of Les Diners de Gala, Salvador Dali’s rare and eccentric cookbook, cost upwards of $400. Now you can buy it for much less, thanks to a Taschen reprint. With recipes ranging from fast-acting cocktails to lambs brain with avocado to a royal peacock...

While the beauty of brutalist and concrete architecture still stirs controversy, there's no debate about the beauty of these well designed and wonderfully informative maps from the talented cartographers at Blue Crow Media.

Measure your day in mechanical clacks. Our favorite retro timepiece keeps wasted minutes in check.

Eric Grundhauser Senior Producer

Depending on your morning mood, this is either the world's smartest or most annoying alarm clock. Regardless, there's no snoozing with Clocky.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

Bring out a porrón at your next dinner party for a wonderful display of wine-drinking might. In Spanish tradition, the glass pitcher is filled with wine or cider, lifted near (but never touching) the drinker's mouth, and quickly tipped to start pouring as they extend their arm away. As seen on...

Jordan Schultz Director of Marketing & Audience

Puzzle boxes are one of my favorites things. I want to be buried in a puzzle box. This one not only looks beautiful and shows off some of its incredible gears, but you even get to build it yourself! 

Eric Grundhauser Senior Producer

Calamityware offers classic porcelain in throughly modern patterns. This plate featuring a streaking Sasquatch is just one of many playful examples.

Both a beautiful object and a useful tool, the pocket-sized Stellarscope displays an accurate celestial map based on your latitude, date, and time of day.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

All the wooden sticks and Styrofoam balls you need to build the classic science project in one box.

A favorite toy of my young nephew, even if he did “accidentally” steer it into a losing battle with a ceiling fan.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

Not only are they beautiful miniature works of art, these space-themed lollipops open a world of pun possibilities. Some suggestions: “I love you to the moon and back” and “I thank my lucky stars for you!”

Larissa Hayden

The world's first food critic once hosted a dinner party where he served only black foods. Thanks to the decision of a paint company to produce a cookbook organized by color, you can now follow in his monocolor footsteps.

Alex Mayyasi Gastro Obscura Editor

I recently received this as a gift. My friend just told me she'd gotten me a notebook, so it was a very cool and startling surprise to be blinded by light when I opened it. I felt like I'd found a magic artifact.

Abi Inman Senior Audience Development Manager

In the era of pods, the stovetop coffee machine has become an endangered species. Get this iconic Italian kitchen appliance while you still can.

Sink into an armchair and cozy up to this special book filled with colorful flap caps, scarves, and rare mitten patterns. Through the work captured in this book, the two local authors aim to keep the tradition and culture of Newfoundland knitting alive.

Tao Tao Holmes Director of Special Projects, Experiences

A walking dad joke if there was ever one.

Dozens of towns around the world that have given themselves over to books and bookshops, and with this guide you can imagine visiting them all!

Sarah Laskow Senior Writer

Internationally-renowned photographer Matt Lambros traveled across the United States to document the country's abandoned theaters—from the supposedly haunted Pacific Warner Theatre in Los Angeles to the Orpheum Theatre in New Bedford, MA. 

Armchair travel meets tin foil hats in this gorgeously designed book documenting sites around the U.S. where UFOs have been spotted. It’s a photographic road trip through E.T. visitation past and present.

Blake Olmstead Head of Design

The Manhattan leg of the New York City subway system distilled to its essence—each dot represents a station on this elegantly minimalist poster.

Track your progress towards visiting all 60 of "America's Best Idea" with this attractive poster celebrating the National Parks of the United States.

Spend a peaceful minute watching ferrous sand, glass, gravity, and magnetism combine to form a spectacle of stalagmites that shifts with each passing second.

The Spomenik Database is a catalog that aims to “explore and demystify” the stunning concrete monuments built across Balkan states in the mid 20th century. These “spomeniks” are often taken out of context in Western media, but their histories are as fascinating as their design.

Abi Inman Senior Audience Development Manager

This is a stunningly detailed pop-up book that can morph into a planetarium, an infinite calendar, a message encoder, and more. Super cool.

Blake Olmstead Head of Design

A vintage necklace is a charming gift. Even more so when the era in question is the upper Cretaceous Period. With a T. rex close to their heart, your recipient will develop a fondness for fossils faster than you can say “mass extinction.”

Ella Morton Contributing Editor

When I was a kid, I used to charge my older cousins fees for returning borrowed books late. This personal library kit would have made cataloging my collection a whole lot easier.

Jordan Schultz Director of Marketing & Audience

Protein-packed chips that come in several flavors, are extremely tasty, and just happen to be made out of crickets.

Cara Giaimo Staff Writer

A timeless practical joke in the form of a wine glass. Designed by an ancient Greek philosopher, it functions like a normal wine glass but spills everywhere when over-filled by the gluttonous.

Larissa Hayden

This newly annotated edition of the classic wrests the text from English majors and hands it to STEMers, but also brings the concerns of literature—moral weight, literary device, creativity—to readers at risk of underestimating their importance.

This bubblegum-hued, peppermint-flavored pig is a Christmas Day tradition in Saratoga Springs, New York. After placing the pink porker in a velvet pouch, each family member gives it a thwack with an accompanying tiny metal mallet and shares a story of their good fortune from the past year. Once everyone...

Sam O'Brien

The Spill Not is both an ingenious demonstration of centripetal force and a foolproof way for a drunkard to carry around his preferred beverage.

Joshua Foer Co-Founder

A spindly twig that predicts the weather? Think what you will, it's probably just as accurate as your smartphone weather app, or, for that matter, Karen from Mean Girls. Made from "weather-detecting" balsam fir, this elegant 14-inch pseudo-meteorological device curves upwards for clear skies or downwards for rain and snow....

Tao Tao Holmes Director of Special Projects, Experiences

Invented in France 1955, the wood-handled N°06 is the smallest Opinel pocket knife to feature the manufacturer's iconic locking safety ring.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

Pass the time by putting together a puzzle representation of Frank Lloyd Wright's unique home, Fallingwater. Between piecing together the blueprints and the house's iconic look, it's bound to amaze the architecture lover in your life.

Samantha Chong Associate Director, Audience Development

Color-changing, camouflaging, ink-cloud concealing cephalopods are basically the closest thing we have on earth to real-life shapeshifters. I loved learning all about these mysterious creatures from cephalopod expert—and AO trip leader—Sarah MacAnulty, all while calmly coloring the tentacles of a giant squid. 

Rachel Bouton Program Manager, Group and Co-Branded Experiences

Enjoy the illusion of motion with the 18 included picture strips, or become an amateur animator by drawing your own.

“Get your cactus some pants!” CactiPants offers charming 3D-printed cactus and succulent planters modeled after famous Italian landmarks.

Larissa Hayden

Learn the basics of photography and make beautiful shadow prints using just the sun, water, and this light sensitive paper.

Larissa Hayden

From early computer programmers to the “girl gamers” of the 1990s, Claire Evans does an incredible job of highlighting the important women who are often left out of conventional tellings of internet history. I just finished this book and can see their influence everywhere now—not just in the internet as...

Lex Berko Senior Editor

Baboons do it unashamedly. Coral snakes do it in defense. Parrots don't do it at all. Find out which animals fart and which animals don't in this oddly detailed book.

An herbal tablet and post-meal digestive that improbably became a favorite candy of Indian children in the 80's. Learn more about this nostalgic treat on Gastro Obscura.

Stay a safe distance from creepy-crawlers with this one-handed, bug-catching tool and 5x magnifying lens. After a good, close look, initiate the quick-release and send your insect friend unharmed and on its way.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

If you love books, you're predisposed to loving fonts, considering as no book would exist without them. This font-astically fascinating book does a deep dive into how a font is created, dispersed, used, and misused (including anachronistically!), and it will having you looking at words on a page with a...

Tao Tao Holmes Director of Special Projects, Experiences

A wall clock pared down to the essentials. Hang it as-is in your minimalist living room, our surround it with family photos for a different looks entirely.

This unique pen lets you mix Cyan, Magenta and Yellow inks to achieve a wide range of colors with a minimal amount of supplies. Perfect for bringing a splash of color to your quick doodles in the field, or color coding your notes.

A feat of human invention and ingenuity in the service of laziness, these spectacles function like a periscope to allow you to watch TV (or read) while lying in bed.

There's nothing like a few drinks to bring a bookclub together, and even better if they're literary themed. With concoctions classically entitled Vermouth the Bell Tolls and Romeo and Julep, you'll get the bookworm party started right.

Jordan Schultz Director of Marketing & Audience

Tuck these tiny wind-up butterflies into an old book or a birthday card and watch the recipient's surprise as they suddenly fly away.

Larissa Hayden

Are those human molars or piranha incisors? Is that a tail or a snout? Are the eyeballs supposed to be on the back of the head, and why are they different sizes? These are all valid questions to ask when leafing through this unconventional, pocket-size coffee table book—guaranteed to draw...

Tao Tao Holmes Director of Special Projects, Experiences

Each of the cards in this deck holds a low-stakes challenge. Accept it, and you’ll find yourself paying attention to the shifting textures of the terrain under your feet, keeping watch for circles and squares, or spreading out a picnic in an unexpected place. Pack a few for your next...

Jessica Leigh Hester Senior Editor + Writer

With a bit of time and patience, you can have your own miniature wind-powered robot just like the large scale ones made by Dutch artist Theo Jansen.

Larissa Hayden

This delightful, debut children's book by former Atlas Obscura staff writer Sarah Laskow answers important unicorn questions like why are unicorns associated with rainbows, why do some unicorns have wings, and—of course—are unicorns real? 

Deceptively complex, this wooden puzzle ball is as beautiful to look at as it is challenging to solve.

If there’s nothing more terrifying to you than a blank page, and plain old horizontal lines feel more like prison than prompt, try this notebook of unusual graph paper. Guaranteed to shift your perspective with each new page.

Earthlings have gazed at the dark, star-speckled sky for millennia, and this box of postcards compiles 50 impressions, from the scientific—such images plumbed from Galileo’s notebooks or the NASA archives—to the fanciful.

Jessica Leigh Hester Senior Editor + Writer

Beep Boop. Beep Boop. Beep Boop. Beep Boop. I'm an adorable, little tin can robot. Beep Boop.

Jordan Schultz Director of Marketing & Audience

Love table-top and role-playing games? Pin and share that love with this charming little icosahedron.

Ever notice how the self-appointed hero often only makes matters worse? Show you're not someone in need of rescuing with this bold enamel pin.

The perfect accessory for your next cemetery cocktail party, make any drink more curious with skull-shaped ice.

Paula Mejia Gastro Obscura Associate Editor

This 24-hour video of construction workers continually rebuilding the time out of lumber and bolts is a mesmerizing piece of art. I took an old smartphone, installed this app, and now have a beautifully strange clock on my wall.

Joshua Foer Co-Founder

“Who doesn't want a dose of existentialism with their egg nog?” — Tamara, Seattle, Washington

What Oreos are to milk, these French cookies are to Champagne. Residents of Reims have been dunking these millennial pink biscuits in bubbly for over 300 years.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

An exploration of the ways panoramic photography was used in the early 20th century United States, capturing  and memorializing everything from majestic landscapes to work picnics to man-made disasters.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

The packaging of this Svensk Dröm (or Swedish Dream) Sea Salt Soap is so charming you might opt to decorate with it rather than use it, but if you do open the box you'll enjoy a textured round of soap and an invigorating scrub.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

Celebrate Carl Sagan's audacious and mind-bending attempt to explain human life to civilizations outside our galaxy with this enamel pin reproduction of the golden record carried aboard the Voyager space probes.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

If you haven't heard, single-use plastic straws are on their way out. Get ahead of the curve with this elegant and easy-to-clean set of twelve.

Place this miraculous, flopping fish in your palm and learn your future. Don't like what it reveals? No worries, it's a 72-pack.

When lightning strikes the ground, it can fuse some kinds of sand, clay, or soil into glass. This produces a hollow tube called a fulgurite that can suggest the form of a lightning bolt.

If there's anything can be more divisive than licorice itself, it's likely licorice-flavored toothpaste. What's not debatable, however, is that this beautifully-packaged Italian import will look great next to your bathroom sink.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

My grand uncle used to stock in boxes of Blenheim Ginger Ale at his farm. When I was a kid, it was the first thing I would seek out upon arriving for a weekend stay. I was proud to be the only one of my cousins who could drink the pink...

Luke Thomas Senior Software Engineer

Got dirty hands? Not anymore you don't. A perfect stocking-stuffer for a two-fisted attack on grime.

Tyler Cole VP, Community