White elephant gifts that are at least a damn good price

White elephant is the one gift exchange where being wrong is the objective, which frees you from every damn question except the budget. Excellent. That is the only question we are equipped to answer.

So rather than serve you the same list as every other page on this site, this one is built out of the categories that actually produce ridiculous objects — toys, games, craft kits and kitchen novelty. We cannot tell you whether the thing is funny. We can tell you it has been more expensive than this for eighty-one of the last ninety days, which is a damn fine defence to mount out loud if the gift lands badly.

The one pricing fact that matters at a swap

Everything in a swap is compared against everything else in the room, and the comparison is made on apparent value rather than on price paid. So the useful buy is the one with the biggest gap between what it looks like it cost and what it did — which is exactly what the score measures, and exactly what a strikethrough fails to tell you.

This band is also picked over by the second week of December. The high scores here in early November do not survive to the damn party.