The 2025 Non-Obvious Holiday Gift Guide

Today we continue with my annual Non-Obvious Holiday Gift Guide, featuring a few products that caught my eye throughout the past year.

5. Montblanc Digital Paper

You could get a digital paper tablet from reMarkable, but if you're seeking something a bit more upscale - Montblanc recently released their own "Digital Paper" tablet with a signature pen for digitized notetaking. The initial reviews of this are solid and the packaging (and unboxing) are definitely a premium experience ... which should be expected given its price tag is just under $1000.

6. Classic Reinvented Board Games

There are games that many of us will recognize from our youth, but this year I saw several of them reinvented in some way. There's a completely diabolical version of UNO called “No Mercy” where there's actually a "Draw 10" card—perfect for the most ruthless of your family members. Monopoly and Scrabble did a mashup where you can play both games simultaneously on one board. And on a recent visit to a farmer's market, I met a guy who created a reinvented version of Chess called ChessPlus where you can merge any two of your pieces together to create a new piece that has the powers of both.