I read a book about gift-giving. I wish I could remember the name: it was something like "why Christmas is a horrible idea economically." The upshot was that gift cards were the least economically damaging, because they had the highest chance of the recipient buying something the recipient actually valued at the face value of the card, and people seem to know that inherently. The exception was for people you know really well, and you can give them something they value more than its retail value, because they didn't know it existed, but the writer's analysis was that this only rarely occurred. The rest of the time, perceived value << price.