Mini gifts under $5

Under five dollars splits neatly. On one side are the single pieces: a charm, a resin animal, a balm, a small pendant: one thing, one person, and the price is the price. On the other are the boxes, where five dollars buys a dozen of something and the present is not the piece but the pile: thirty keyrings for a class, twenty-five balms for a staff room. The photograph looks the same either way, so the count under it is the line to read first.

What five dollars cannot buy is worth saying plainly. It does not buy a plated chain that survives daily wear, a candle that burns for more than one evening, or a boxed set with a ribbon on it. If the present has to look like a present on its own, without a card or a bag around it, the ten-dollar page is where that starts. This page is for volume, for stocking toes and for the small thing that goes beside a card.