Unique Gifts Under $50

Every passing minute on this clever clock delivers a slight pattern variation to stop and contemplate.

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

Horror. Adventure. Noir. For the first time, your life can actually smell like the genre you wish it was!

Eric Grundhauser Senior Producer

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.

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

Everyone needs a trebuchet because everyone also occasionally needs to fling things.

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...

A surreal watch for surreal times.

I have this poster hanging above my desk and frequently find myself lost in it. Who knew Kazakhstan was so big? Or that Belgium was so tiny?

Tyler Cole VP, Community

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. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Civilian space tourism isn’t quite ready for blast-off. In the meantime, this poster—which evokes the slew of 1930s-era Works Progress Administration posters that touted America’s national parks—can help armchair astronauts’ imaginations take flight.

Jessica Leigh Hester Senior Editor + Writer

A surviving, signature concession from the now defunct Crystal Beach Amusement Park in Fort Erie, Ontario, loganberry drink is sweet, tart, and an intensely dark purple.

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

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

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

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

The definitive guide to fermentation by the decade's definitive chef.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

I recently had the phenomenal opportunity to staff Atlas Obscura's Death Valley astronomy and night photography trip alongside Tyler Nordgren, an incredibly talented astronomer and artist. Tyler has not only spent years working with the National Park Service on public science and astronomy education—including writing a book on the subject—but...

Tao Tao Holmes Director of Special Projects, Experiences

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

Cara Giaimo Staff Writer

This salt lamp provides a beautiful dreamlike glow that helps you wind down and drift off to sleep feeling relaxed. I’ve gifted one to practically all of my girlfriends. If I were Oprah, it would definitely be one of my favorite things.

Sheila Baker Designer

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

The same grass that feeds massive European bison adds notes of vanilla and lavender to this unique Polish vodka, which includes a blade of grass in the bottle. As featured on Gastro Obscura.

Tao Tao Holmes Director of Special Projects, Experiences

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.

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

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

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

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

What better way to stay in touch with the far corners of capitalism than by having obscure industry trade journals sent to your door? My last issues of Elevator World and American Laundry News were positively scintillating.

Joshua Foer Co-Founder

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

Larissa Hayden

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

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

Larissa Hayden

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

Paula Mejia Gastro Obscura Associate Editor

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.

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.

Discover worlds unseen with this beginner field microscope! Perfect for leaves, bugs, and drops of pond water teeming with life.

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

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.

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

Hide your most important secrets deep in your bookcase. If you're a bibliophile, this book safe will fool the most cunning of thieves.

Jordan Schultz Director of Marketing & Audience

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

Jordan Schultz Director of Marketing & Audience

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

See your home and neighborhood through the eyes of the bad guy with this fascinatingly in-depth look at the methods experienced burglars use to "case the joint".

A well-researched and lively read about one of the most impressive technological achievements of all time: the 1858 laying of a telegraph line crossing the Atlantic and connecting North America to Europe.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

Bringing seafood on a long-haul flight may irritate your seatmate for reasons of malodorousness. Solution: shrimp pillow. This soft and comfy neck-encircler brings all the appeal of the briny sea with none of the rough surfaces associated with actual crustaceans.

Ella Morton Contributing Editor

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

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

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

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

Give a classic arcade feel to any rocker-style light switch. No electrical wiring (or quarters) needed.

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

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

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

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

Combine a ship in a bottle, a sea monster, and an enamel pin and you're going to have some very smitten Atlas Obscura employees. What's not to love?

Jordan Schultz Director of Marketing & Audience

Knowing your way around rope is like having a secret super power. This little knot-tying set is the perfect pocket-sized introduction to mastering friction, tension, and strain. You'll have the most able set of hands at any camp site, boat dock, or rock face. 

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.

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.

Rain delays can ruin even the best-planned adventures, but this waterproof card deck is a great way to wait out the storm. Perfect for the beach as well.

Wear your heart on your sleeve or anywhere else you might like with this anatomically-correct iron-on patch.

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.

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

Tyler Cole VP, Community