Gifts for the man who has (or could buy) everything?

He sounds a lot like me. If so, buying gifts sounds difficult, but is actually very easy. Here's why: we don't buy the new thing while the old one works just fine. I still have a CRT television. My macbook pro battery is dead as a doornail so I have to keep it plugged in all the time. I wish my lunchbox/thermos was a little bigger. There are dozens of those things, big and small, that aren't enough of a problem to actually spend money on yet. Sometimes I think about buying one of those things, then I talk myself out of it. Old one still works. But if someone else bought me a new lunch box, I would love it and pet it and take care of it real good. So think about his things and what he's expressed mild annoyance about. You don't want to accidentally "replace" something that's old because he loves it so much. That's a different thing.

I'm one of those people who buys whatever I need and never really wants for anything, and my favorite gift is a reservation at a really nice restaurant or a bottle of very fancy wine/booze. The former is especially good because you can enjoy it together!

Another experiential gift choice would be tickets to an event or concert that he would enjoy. If he likes good food, there are often food events that are about $75 per ticket for a night of sampling the area's best restaurants, I have found these to be awesome special occasion gifts. I'm also a big proponent of gifts that cost very little but are personalized. For example, my husband and I get laughs out of lolcats, so I make my own lolcat graphics featuring our cats for him on special occasions, and I have made things like a mug with the homemade lolcat on it as a gift. Photobooks of your year together make good anniversary gifts in my opinion, and you can also do personalized calendars and tailor the photos for each month to the season. Also, perhaps it's high-school-ish, but I still love homemade mix CDs, especially ones with homemade CD cases. Along the lines of cooking stuff, it's easy but still pretty classy to make him a set of infused olive oils.

I'm one of those super practical people who are very particular about what they own. It's wonderful of you to respect that! I like to think of gifts as belonging to one or more of these categories:Things that make life easier. Gift vouchers. Subscriptions. Memberships. Household items. Handiwork tools, kitchen gadgets, stationery...Indulgence. Fancy edibles/perishables. Electronic gadgets. Art. Clothes and shoes.New experiences. Exotic food. Experiential gifts. Books. Kits that let you try out new hobbies.Bonding opportunities. Board games. Event tickets. Sports equipment. Holidays. Things that require assembly.Gestures of loyalty. Mix tapes. Scrapbooks. Care packages. Treasure capsules (a selection of small but interesting gifts). Anything home made, imbued with personal meaning, or took a lot of time and effort.Given your situation, I think you should go for the latter three categories, especially the last one. A treasure capsule full of spices. A framed map with all the routes you've travelled together picked out in ink. A home made rock/plant identification kit (think guidebook, magnifying glasses, tweezers/pick, specimen bottles). Mix and match!

I am this guy. I am very difficult to shop for because I buy the things I want, after much obsessing over making sure I'm buying the right one. I tend to optimize my purchasing in that way, so people "surprising" me with art, technology, or attire are usually appreciated, but typically fall short of the mark, just because I'm particular about those things. Experiences are honestly fantastic, though, for me. You can do things like a Discovery Flight (where he'll go up in a small airplane for about an hour and even get to execute some turns and the like), or a racing experience, more extreme things like skydiving/bungee jumping, or less extreme things like hot air ballooning or cooking classes. Consider a museum membership if he likes a certain class of art, or even a subscription to an "of the month" club. http://www.zingermans.com/ has some fantastic clubs with random deliciousness delivered on a regular basis. Maybe a subscription to http://www.cooksillustrated.com/, which is a great periodical by America's Test Kitchen full of really useful content. These are the sort of things where, for me, you can't go wrong. Experiences are what make life interesting, and they're not something you can "already own" or "have bought for yourself", typically.

You're buying for me. Here's what you need to buy: something I would buy...but not for myself. Find something he enjoys, and get a higher end version of it, than he would buy. Shaving stuff: badger brush. Taylor of bond street soap Hiking stuff: watch with GPS and/or HRM. Prolly not if you have the $150 limit. Video games: $150 gift certificate. Seriously. Otherwise, tell us what games he has, and we'll tell you what to get. Cooking stuff: stay away, unless you KNOW he wants it. Otherwise, you're basically telling him: oh, you like cooking do ya...well, cook this. What kind of watch does he wear? Does it need a new bracelet/strap? Clothing stuff: high end men's accessories. Nice cologne if you know his scent. Is there anything that is breaking, about to break, or Jerry-rigged? Get him a new one. High end keyboard/ trackpad/ mouse What else about this dude?

Full grain leather belt

If he's that practical, do you need to buy gifts? Do you know he wants gifts? My partner and I don't take much pleasure in giving and receiving gifts, generally, so we don't usually buy them for each other unless something really jumps out at us. We do sometimes decide, for instance at Christmas time, to get something we've both been wanting and call it our gift to each other. But in general we show our love for each other in other ways.

Perhaps a bespoke http://www.ecoessentialpen.com/ or mechanical pencil? I get compliments all the time when breaking out a unique writing implement.