Why objects fail here
Someone who buys what they want has already run the search you are about to run. Anything you find, they have seen. Anything they wanted, they own.
The only gifts that work are ones they would not buy for themselves — which is a much shorter and more interesting list.
1. Experiences
The standard answer and still the best one. A meal, a show, a day out, a flight in something small.
Experiences work because people who buy objects freely are often much stingier about time and experiences. Permission to spend an afternoon doing something is the actual gift.
Read the fee and expiry rules first — experience gift cards covers what usually goes wrong.
2. Things adjacent to what they love, one level up
Not the thing they already have. The thing next to it that they have not got round to.
- A keen cook who owns everything: a card for a specialist food supplier rather than a kitchen shop.
- A reader who has every book: an independent bookshop card, or audiobook credits for the commute.
- A gardener: a specialist nursery rather than a garden centre.
Specialist beats general at every level of this.
3. Things they would consider frivolous
Everyone has a category they refuse to spend on. Very good coffee. A proper haircut. The expensive version of something boring.
A card removes the decision, which is the only barrier. This is the most reliable of the four and takes the most knowing them.
4. Giving on their behalf
For someone who genuinely wants nothing, a donation in their name is not a cop-out — but it has to be a cause they actually care about, named specifically, or it reads as avoidance.
Amounts
Higher than usual, or explicitly small and specific. The middle is awkward: £50 to someone who spends freely reads as neither substantial nor pointed.
Either cover something whole, or make it deliberately small and exact — "this is precisely enough for the good coffee, stop buying the cheap one".
The note does the work
More than in any other case, the message is the present. "I couldn't think of an object you don't have, so here is an afternoon" is a better gift than most objects.