The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide

Valentine’s Day is less than week away; if you want to prove yourself the geekiest cupid around you’ll definitely want to check out our guide to geeky Valentine’s big and small.

The following gift guide includes gifts for the geeks in your life and gifts for geeks to give those that appreciate their geeky nature. Our methodology for picking Valentine’s-related gifts focused on gifts that were either traditional Valentine’s day gifts with a geek-slant or a nod to an aspect of geek culture. Read on to check out the geektacular pickings we mined the internet to unearth.

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Love on a Budget ($15 and Under)

If you’re on a limited budget or don’t ascribe to the whole Valentine’s Day as Christmas-in-February mentality, here are a couple affordable gifts that say “I love you, but not enough to skip lunch all this month to buy you a rock from some African mine.”

I Love Geeks: The Official Handbook		xkcd: volume 0
I Love Geeks is a light hearted look at geekdom from the eyes of a women (and geek) in love with a geeky guy. Includes guides to surviving and loving Comic Con and more.  Price: $10		Geeks love for the quirky stick figure comic strip xkcd is strong. Book includes hi-res images and subtle inclusion of the alt-text from the original comics. Price: $13
Geek Culture Energy Drinks		Pink Domo Figure
Energy drinks packaged as health potions? Sign us up. You can also score energy drinks packaged as Mana potions, blood transfusions, and zombie blood. Price: $3-6		Domo-kun is the official mascot of Japan’s NHK television station and has become some what of a cultural icon. Popular as an meme and among geek culture as a whole, a Domo is a fun desk trinket to gift your geek . Price: $7
Plush Mono Microbe		LED Flashing Heart Kit
Nothing says “I wanna make out with you” like giving somebody a plush doll of mononucleosis the “kissing disease”. Amirite? Right? (There’s also a Chlamydia version if you’ve got some bad news to share.) Price: $9.		Paper Valentine’s are for rubes, this LED electronics kit will show your sweetheart that you love them like LEDs love circuit boards. Price: $7

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Love with an Open Checkbook ($15-50)

If you’ve got a little extra cash to spend and want to buy a gift with a little more mileage than a bag of zombie blood, check out some of these upgraded options.

Board Games		Echo Gloves
Games are a big part of geek culture. Introduce your sweetie to some board gaming fun with awesome couple-friendly games like Mr. Jack, Pandemic, Hive, and Carcassonne. Price: $20+		If your better half freezes their fingers off to text you because their winter gloves ruin the touch screen receptivity on their smart phone, get them a pair of screen-friendly gloves. Price: $30
The “Ties Suck” Tie		Custom Phone/Netbook/Electronics Skin
If your sweetie has to begrudgingly wear a tie to work let it be this tie that announced “ties suck” in binary code all the way down the front. Price: $30.		Unique Skins has a selection of artwork you can use to create protective skins for all sorts of devices. Don’t see something you like? Upload your own artwork and photos for a truly personal gift. Price: $7-45
Geek T-Shirts		8-Bit Bouquets
Who can resist a good geek t-shirt? We’ve got love poems, geek love, and even a shirt with a love meter that gets brighter the closer it is to another wearer. Price: $16-25		8-bit anything is a win when it comes to geeks as 8-bit recalls the sweet blocky graphics of a youth misspent on video games. Skip the flowers that wilt and give the flowers that supercharge. Price: $15

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Love with Platinum Card ($50+ and Beyond)

If you’re looking to spoil your little nerdling here are some awesome, but not particularly cheap, options to splurge on:

Matching Role Playing Costumes		iPad
Is there a better expression of geek love than picking up paired Princess Leia and Han Solo costumes? Princess Peach and Mario? Insist you’re just getting a head start on a very sexy Halloween. Price: $50-100+		The iPad might be the single greatest goofing off and geeking out device around. Waste hours with your dearest playing games (like Small World!) and more. Price: $499+
External Hard Drives		Parrot AR Drone Quadricopter
Sailor Moon DVD rips take up space. Help your geek transport and tidy their digital collections with a Valentine red external hard drive. Price: $100+		It’s a quad-copter with a built-in camera and remote control via iPhone or iPod Touch. It can flip, swoop, and hover in place. What isn’t there to love about this? We want ten (equipped with laser beams and a taste for justice). Price: $299

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Unlike our great Christmas gift guide we’re not going to include a “what to buy if you don’t know what to buy” section… if you don’t know what to by your Valetine then a generic Amazon.com gift card isn’t going to save your ass. Time to engage in some stalker-quality recon and get a better idea what to buy. Have a great idea to share with your fellow readers? Hit up the comments and share your gift ideas with the rest of us.