The Wax Museum’s Gift Guide for Physical Media Lovers
A curated haul of records, films, and books for people who prefer their art in their hands, not the cloud.
Physical media needs our support more than ever. Streaming services already interrupt everything with ads, and now we are staring down a near future where AI tools literally rewrite scenes in real time to shove products into the story. Characters will break script mid-sentence to hold up a branded drink, smile, and sell it to you. Here’s the demo if you want to see the nightmare unfold. And with Netflix set to acquire Warner Bros., entire film libraries are being swallowed by platforms that rarely bother with physical releases.
That’s why I put together this guide: to celebrate media you can actually hold. Vinyl, books, Blu-rays — the kind of stuff that makes collectors light up and won’t vanish when the licensing deal runs out.
Vinyl Record Gifts
Gift an Album of the Year
Pictured: Blood Orange’s Essex Honey on Basketball 2 LP, $44.98 at Urban Outfitters
I dropped my 100 favorite albums of 2025 last week, and any one of them would make a killer gift. Whether you’re shopping for a crate-digger or someone just getting into vinyl, there’s a perfect match waiting on that list.
Gift a Signed Album Cover
Pictured: ’s illuminati hotties’ Power on Blue Vinyl, $31.98 at Park Ave CDs
A signed sleeve instantly turns a record into a keepsake, and they look great framed above your turntable.
There’s two spots worth checking out for artist signed covers at retail price. First, my local shop, Park Ave CDs has current inventory featuring Hotline TNT, Home is Where, Glitterer, Tim Heidecker, and more. Another great source is Long Beach’s Fingerprints, with autographed vinyl by The Waterboys, Gwen Stefani, Matt Berninger, and DIIV to name a few.
Sequoia Box Set
$250, Numero Group
What a gift from Numero Group, who’ve become one of the top purveyor labels of archival music reissues. Sequoia is a 77-track time capsule chronicling the roots of ‘90s emo through this 7-inch vinyl box set, accompanied by a 136-page hardcover book packed with flyers, photos, and deeply researched liner notes that map the scene from D.C. basements to San Diego garages. To begin sampling, I recommend dropping the needle on short-lived, Chicago four-piece The Lazarus Plot (tracks 63 to 68).
Cindy Lee - Diamond Jubilee 3 LP
$49.99, Bandcamp
What better physical gift than something that isn’t available on streaming services! At a sprawling 32 tracks and nearly two hours long, Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee might seem daunting in the age of TikTok-length attention spans. But once you press play, you’re hooked. This lo-fi, psych-rock gem balances the accessible with the avant-garde, crafting nostalgic stories of love and longing. Bold and immersive, it’s no wonder Pitchfork chose Diamond Jubilee as the third best album of the decade.
Bloc Party - Silent Alarm 20th Anniversary
$150 for 4 LP Deluxe Box Set, $44.98 for 2 LP
Silent Alarm is a desert island record for me, and it has never had a vinyl pressing worthy of its legacy until now. Bloc Party’s debut is still a razor-sharp snapshot of mid-2000s indie rock, all jittery guitars and wide-eyed anthems, and my old copy has been worn down for years while never sounding great to begin with. This new 20th Anniversary edition finally fixes that. The double white vinyl gives the album the space it deserves, and the deluxe box adds two more LPs of demos, B-sides, and live sessions. The jump in quality is immediate — the kick drum hits harder, the mix feels massive, and it’s easily the best this album has sounded on wax. If you want to give someone the definitive version of a modern classic, this is it.
Boogie Nights Soundtrack
$32.99, Capitol Music
🗣️ SPILL THE WINE, TAKE THAT PEARL!
Give the gift of one of the greatest film soundtracks of all time. Boogie Nights is finally back in print, and for the first time ever it’s on colored wax. Capitol Music announced the pressing yesterday and it’s already shipping out Friday, just in time for New Year’s. If you need reminding, Boogie Nights is the GOAT New Year’s Eve movie.
4K and Blu-ray Gifts
Studio Ghibli SteelBook Collection
Starting at $17.99, Amazon
Studio Ghibli’s SteelBook collection is one of the classiest ways to gift someone a film. The minimalist packaging, lush restorations, and timeless animation make these releases look incredible on a shelf. Just a tip though — if you’re gifting Grave of the Fireflies, maybe prepare them emotionally first. Good lord.
American Psycho 25th Anniversary 4K UHD
$39.99, Lionsgate Limited
Mary Harron’s adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho is one of the great satires of the modern era, with Christian Bale channeling Tom Cruise to terrifying perfection as Patrick Bateman. Released this week, Lionsgate went all out on this 25th Anniversary collector’s edition featuring the film in 4K along with plenty of goodies like business cards, a Blockbuster card (for returning video tapes) and best of all, a Huey Lewis and the News’ Sports inspired CD case.
Dirty Work 4K UHD “Dirtier Cut”
$32.99, Amazon
For the comedy nerd in your life who loses entire evenings to Norm Macdonald rabbit holes on YouTube (guilty), give the gift of Dirty Work. Easily one of the year’s most surprising home video releases, this restored 4K edition comes courtesy of cult film preservers Vinegar Syndrome, who unearthed the long-lost R-rated cut that’s been missing for over 30 years. I watched it a few weeks ago and was cackling to myself like a madman. RIP Norm, director Bob Saget, and Chris Farley, whose final screen performance is perfectly unhinged.
JFK Director’s Cut 4K UHD
$19.49, Amazon
Another distributor doing things the right way is Shout! Factory, who currently has a 40% off sale on 4K’s and Blu-Rays. One title I’ll always push, especially for your conspiracy-minded friend (again, guilty), is Oliver Stone’s JFK. Few films feel more American: you vote for change, they kill the guy you picked, and 60 years later we are no closer to the truth. Stone’s paranoid epic plays like a three hour middle finger to the military industrial complex, and its prescience grows scarier in our age of nonstop conspiracies and creeping collapse.
Possession 4K UHD and Blu-ray
$29.99 Standard, $64.99 Limited, DiabolikDVD
For the horror fan in your life, you can’t do much better than gifting Andrzej Żuławski’s psychodramatic freakout Possession. For decades, this 1981 cult classic was a legendary white whale for American collectors. The only way to see the real film in the US was to import a pricey region-locked disc or track down a friend of a friend with a sketchy rip. Now, at long last, Possession arrives on UHD with a new Dolby Vision color grade and a mountain of extras, including a 220 page hardback book and a full 211 page shooting script.
Flow 4K + Blu-ray
$39.96, Criterion
Criterion saw every boutique label leveling up this year and said fine, watch this. In the last few months alone they’ve dropped Eyes Wide Shut, Burden of Dreams, The Breakfast Club, Altered States, the Wes Anderson Archive, and Flow, the Oscar-winning triumph from Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis. Flow was one of my favorite films of 2024, a wordless stunner created by the smallest team to ever win Best Animated Feature. It’s a visual feast and a total crowd-pleaser, equally great for animation nerds and kids who just want to watch a cat survive the apocalypse.
Book Gifts
Skylight Books Signed First Edition Club
Typically between $24 and $30 a month, Skylight Books
One of the best gifts I’ve ever given myself is joining the Skylight Books Signed First Edition Club, and now I’m gifting it forward. Each month, you get a signed first edition of a newly released book, usually fiction, handpicked by the Los Angeles bookworms. The archive is stacked with heavy hitters like Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! and Katie Kitamura’s Audition, and I’ve discovered so many gems I never would’ve picked up on my own. It’s perfect for anyone who wants to build an eclectic library that could also accrue value over time.
Frank Sinatra Has A Cold by Gay Talese and Phil Stern
$70, Taschen
“Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” is widely considered the greatest celebrity profile ever written, and this coffee table edition gives it the museum treatment it deserves. In 1965, Esquire sent Gay Talese to profile Sinatra, who refused to speak with him, so Talese wrote off observation, detail, and vibe alone. The result, which you can read for free in its entirety here, became the crown jewel of New Journalism, later crowned Esquire’s best story ever published. This edition pairs Talese’s original notes with Phil Stern’s stunning photographs from four decades of shadowing Sinatra, making it a perfect gift for readers, writers, and anyone who loves watching a legend come undone at the edges.
This Year: 365 Songs Annotated: A Book of Days by John Darnielle
$35.50, Amazon
For the Mountain Goats fan in your life, or for anyone lyrically obsessive, This Year: 365 Songs Annotated is the holy grail. Across 800 plus songs written over three decades, John Darnielle has built one of the most sprawling catalogs in modern music, and this new book offers the definitive deep dive. Pairing 365 of his most meaningful lyrics with personal commentary, Darnielle reflects on the people, places, and oddities behind the songs. It’s equal parts memoir, lyric archive, and creative writing masterclass.
The Anthony Bourdain Reader: New, Classic, and Rediscovered Writing, edited by Kimberly Witherspoon
$23.88, Amazon
For the traveler, the chef, or the cynic, The Anthony Bourdain Reader is an essential addition to any bookshelf. This beautifully curated anthology treats him first and foremost as what he always believed himself to be: a writer. It pulls together his sharpest essays, travel dispatches, kitchen war stories, and newly unearthed material like teenage diary entries, unpublished fiction, and fragments from his unfinished novel, offering the fullest portrait yet of his restless mind. If someone on your list still misses hearing his voice, this book brings it back better than anything in years.
Texas!
$50, A24
A24’s Texas! is the sequel to their Florida! book, one of my favorite coffee table staples. I’ve lived in Central Florida my whole life, and I can confirm Florida! is freakishly well researched, so I trust them to capture the unhinged corners of another giant, chaotic state. Texas! is a 624 page, hyper-local love letter featuring an intro by Kacey Musgraves, excerpts from icons like Larry McMurtry and Jia Tolentino, original stories from Texas filmmakers, fold-out maps, recipes, and photography that spans highways, canyons, marshes, and dust storms. It’s a perfect gift for anyone who loves oddball Americana.
Thanks for flipping through The Wax Museum Gift Guide — hope it sparked some ideas for the physical media lovers in your life (or, let’s be real, for yourself).
And while you are in the gift-giving spirit, swing by The Wax Museum Gift Shop on your way out. We’ve got a mousepad for your desk (pictured below), a tote for your record hauls, a coffee mug for your morning spins, and a weekender bag sturdy enough to survive a few bookstore detours. Treat yourself, treat a friend, and keep the analog good vibes rolling.
Thanks for reading and catch you next week,
Jared
That BG nights vinyl 😍