My son has taken to wearing this used-to-be-a-mood-disc but now it’s just black pendant on a cord around his neck. This is not the first time he’s worn things around his neck. For Christmas I’d like to get him a real pendant/necklace that looks good. His interests are sci-fi, fantasy, robots, technololgy, warhammer 40k, A Song of Ice and Fire, holograms, and anything “cool.”
I want to get him something kind of understated–not something that screams loudly for attention. I’m thinking a black satin cord with a pendant of some sort would be perfect. Problem is I don’t even know where to start looking.
So I once again turn to the Teeming Millions who are so good at shopping and finding just the right things.
I can’t afford precious metals so it will have to be something relatively inexpensive. Anyone want to try to help me find the perfect necklace/pendant for him? Nothing too big, nothing too attention-grabbing… but something that reflects his interests and something that would actually look good around his neck, as if it belongs there. What he’s wearing right now looks kind of like a piece of junk, and what he wore before that was just some braided yarn that he made into a sort of lanyard and just hung around his chest. It was orange.
I think he’s old enough to have a piece of jewelry that makes a statement about his tastes. Nothing girly. something that tied into A Song of Ice and Fire would probably be my first choice, as he’s super into those books right now, having just finished book 5. After that maybe some sort of disc with a hologram on it of something cool. Or a dragon. Or… I don’t know. He’s a 16 year old boy. He’s pretty typical in his tastes except he doesn’t like sports.
A satin necklace sounds pretty flimsy. Are you sure you want to go with that? Silver is pretty cheap. I think that’s a better choice. Satin seems like it would break.
Be prepared to discover that the “junk” he’s wearing now has some sort of very specific meaning to him, and don’t take it personally if he doesn’t switch. IME, teenage boys do not wear jewelry to express themselves or show their taste–they wear it as a talisman. And he is not likely to want to share the meaning of the talisman with anyone. It may be girl-related, or it may just be really hard for him to explain. So when he says he wears it for “no reason”, I wouldn’t believe him. It is very likely that it serves as a serious symbol or reminder about something.
I’m not really up on this stuff, but I’ve seen some extremely interesting Steampunk jewelry on Etsy. I mean, that encompasses sci-fi, technology, robots, fantasy, right? It’s also been relatively inexpensive and for both sexes. Good luck!
If you’re willing to pay a bit, Bico Australiamakes some really cool stuff. I was just looking at these yesterday and finally got around to ordering one for myself (I got this one–I love the two-tone designs).
ETA: Oh, sorry, missed the part about ‘inexpensive.’ Check out the site, though–I haven’t looked at all their stuff, and I don’t think it’s all nearly expensive as the two-tone ones.
I’ve found some wonderful pendants on e-bay that were very inexpensive. Just search for “dragon pendant” or “celtic pendant”; you can even specify under a certain price.
I use black rubber necklaces for a lot of my pendants; they’re the same style as the black satin ones but wear better. Satin can look dingy after a while.
Why not a Game of Thrones (aka Song of Fire and Ice) Pendant? Lots of them at the link, and only a tiny bit over your price range ($34.99). You’d have to figure out which was his favorite house, though.
I doubt it, since he changes it up all the time. For a while he was wearing a shoelace tied around his neck. Before that it was some orange yarn that he’d braided. He just makes loops out of anything and hangs them around his neck for a few weeks.
I’ll take the thread in a different direction and say you should get him something that compliments his bling, after all it sounds like he has a large collection of it already.
Get him a hat, the 40’s has a good selection of cool hats
If he likes A Song of Ice and Fire, the main religion in that series is the worship of “The Seven” (seven aspects of the same godhead) that are symbolized by a seven pointed star. There are several places online to buy seven pointed star pendants.
I like this design because it’s so interwoven and reminiscent of the Star of David.
Well, I’ve consistently heard of (severed) human ears described as looking like dried apricots. Which you can get a whole bag of for a coupla bucks.
Just sayin’.
After that, you might try a vacuum tube necklace—you can probably get the tubes cheaper than a finished necklace, if you’re up for a little craft work.
A google shopping search for game of thrones didn’t yield much in your price range. Dragon pendants for men on Amazon came up with some good looking stuff, one of which might be to his tastes.
If you do a search on phrases like ‘winter is coming’ there are a couple of plain pendants, but HBO’s shop has a keychain that could easily be turned into a pendant and is a good price.
Silver is a good idea, but with boys especially, it’s hard to buy jewelry. Often the things they like are so significant in meaning to them and them only, you buy them stuff and they won’t wear it.
You might want to try taking him under the guise of buying a piece of jewelry for another boy (say a cousin or something) and see what he likes, or ask him to help you pick out a necklace for another man. Then of course, give it to him.
This wouldn’t really work, as the only other boys that I could could conceivably buy a gift for at Christmas would be my brothers (ages 17 and 18) but they’re really strict, conservative Christians and would have nothing in common, taste-wise, with my son, so picking ou tsomething that “they would like” would not yeild me anything for my own son. And he knows quite well that I won’t be buying presents for anyone outside of the direct family this year, because of our finances.
I’m not too worried about him not wearing something because it’s not personal enough to him. He’s not that way. In fact he’s quite the opposite. If he’s given a wearable gift (shirt, hat, jacket, etc) he will tend to wear it for days and weeks on end until we make him wear something else. The things he wears as “necklaces” now are items of opportunity, not items of importance to him.
