Best White Elephant Gift Ideas Under $50

October 4, 2019

What’s harder than finding a gift that one specific person will love? Try finding a gift that will appeal to everyone at a party! White Elephant gift exchanges are traditionally held around the holidays, but given how challenging it can be to find a great White Elephant gift, you’d be smart to get started with the shopping right now. To be fair, you should probably get all of your holiday shopping started right now, but it’s especially crucial to get going early on the White Elephant gift ideas, especially if you’re looking to spend $50 or less!

A quick refresh on how the White Elephant works before we get into the thick of the shopping. In short, White Elephant is a holiday tradition in which everyone brings a wrapped gift to a party (or office) and drops it anonymously into a large pile. When it’s time to play, participants each select a number, which determines their place in line. With every turn, White Elephant participants can either choose to unwrap a new mystery gift, or trade the still-unwrapped gift for an item someone else has already selected and unwrapped. It’s equal parts fun and nerve-wracking, which makes White Elephant a classic party staple.

Usually, everyone’s agreed on a relatively low price limit, which actually makes for very high stakes. People generally go one of two ways with White Elephant gifts: a gag gift, which no one wants to end up with, or a really awesome gift, which everyone winds up trying to acquire. It can be fun to give the gag gift, but there’s definitely a pride that comes with giving the more desired White Elephant gift. But something that everyone wants can be hard to find, especially at a relatively low cost, which is why MASSE is here to help with the Best White Elephant gift ideas for $50 and under, which is the general price limit for White Elephant gifts.The low price point keeps the game fun while also making it a bit of a challenge!

What constitutes a good White Elephant Gift idea for under $50 does somewhat hinge on the crowd at the party you’re attending — a White Elephant game filled with seniors will be different than one filled with young people, while White Elephant gift ideas are going to vary a bit depending on the gender makeup of the crowd, too — some will love self-care treatments, others might be into cool new technology. Luckily, MASSE is filled with recommendations from people of all walks of life, united by their love of shopping and sharing their expertise. That means when you’re shopping for White Elephant gift ideas under $50, you’re going to get great advice from the kind of people who will be at your party. You can thank us when you have the most popular White Elephant gift of all.

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  • Mini Facial Oil Trio

    $29.00

    By Herbivore Botanicals

    It’s a conundrum: Everyone wants a good skincare product, but it can be hard to find something that works for everyone. You could roll the dice on one facial oil… or you could cover all your bases with Herbivore Botanticals’ Mini Facial Oil trio. It comes with oils that balance, hydrate, and return the glow to all types of skin, even tricky combination skin. For a White Elephant gift literally everyone will be after, look no further.

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  • S'well Water Bottle

    $35.00

    By S'well

    There are two kinds of people at offices and at the gym: first, there are the people who walk around with those smooth, colorful metal bottles. Second, there are the people refilling a plastic single-use water bottle over and over, health consequences be damned. If you’re one of the former, congrats! You know how valuable a S’well bottle is and probably want to share that knowledge with others, which makes it a perfect White Elephant gift idea for you — as one MASSE user points out, they come in tons of colors, so they fit all audiences. And if you’re one of the latter, well, maybe by two S’well bottles: One for yourself, and another for your White Elephant party. It’ll be a big win-win!

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  • Otherland Candles

    $36.00

    By Otherland

    Why do so many people give candles as gifts? Well, they’re timeless, unisex, and just about everyone can use them. Otherland Candles are top White Elephant gifts because they offer so much variety. from a coconut and soy wax blend, they smell “amazing,” as one MASSE user pointed out, and look gorgeous, too. They last for 55 hours, so they last a super long time, too. And you can point out to the other White Elephant party participants that Otherland is a woman-owned and run company, too, which will definitely make it more desirable.

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  • Monogrammed Cocktail Napkin Set

    $42.00

    By Tuckernuck

    It’s hard to know how to shop for decor that might fit everyone’s tastes, but it’s hard to imagine that there’s a single adult on this green earth that wouldn’t be into these monogrammed cocktail napkins from Tuckemuck. And we stress the word adult there, because being able to host a viable cocktail party is pretty much the telltale sign of true adulthood. Giving these cocktail napkins as White Elephant gift guarantees you’re helping someone reach that very important stage of life, so really, you’re performing a public service.

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  • All-American Ads of the 90’s

    $40.00

    By Taschen

    With apologies to Don Draper and his Mad Men pals in the ‘60s, advertising really exploded as its own form of popular art in the ‘90s, to the point that anyone who grew up then remembers commercials as much as they do the stuff they were selling. In fact, if you look at YouTube view numbers, sometimes it’s the commercials and advertisements that stick more than anything else. This “super sweet” coffee table book from Taschen, All-American Ads of the ‘90s, makes an excellent White Elephant gift for any group of people who remembers those days and can sing a few jingles. It has six distinct chapters that recall retro advertisements from the era, for everything from Game Boys and fast food to cars and high fashion.

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