A December to Remember
Welcome to the 1st Annual Sunday Bunch Holiday Gift Guide
Hi everybody.
Happy Sunday1 to all who celebrate. You’ve survived eleven long months, you have (hopefully) come together and celebrated (or gotten through) this long weekend by binging on food, shopping, football, and more shopping. Now you’ve made it to the first day of the final month of 2024.
Assuming you’re reading this on Sunday, take the opportunity now for one last deep breath. Work deadlines, political and business developments, social obligations, emotional meltdowns–both nog-induced and of the non-nog variety–it’s all going to come in hot between tomorrow and at least the 20th.
Before it gets particularly hectic, there is one thing you really don’t want to forget: finding that perfect gift for the people that matter most in your life.
Sure, the internet is about 37% product recommendation lists now, so you can pretty easily find something2 for almost everybody3.
Still, every year people write in and ask me: Kyle, what about that person in my life who is more discerning? The modern industrialist and sporting enthusiast, the person who will only invest–financially and emotionally–in a commitment to excellence, on and off the field of play.
After enough years of sending along personal emails, some of you suggested I publish my annual list. Now I give you, for the first time publicly: the Sunday Bunch Holiday Gift Guide. Nothing but the best for the most important people in your lives.
Seasons Greetings,
BUNCH
🎄🎁🎉
The 1st Annual
SUNDAY BUNCH GIFT GUIDE
Whether it was an NVIDIA comp package that vested over the summer or an OnlyFans side hustle that turned into a multimillion-dollar empire, you had a good year.
Show the people you love how much you care with one or more of these fine gifts.
Illegal Booze
$10,000+. Thanks to a new state law, the Kentucky Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control now has the authority to auction off impounded alcohol. This week, they opened up a new lot filled with gems from the vault, including 10-year-old bottles of Old Rip Van Winkle, Buffalo Trace Eagle Rare 10 Year, Old Fitzgerald, and a Maker’s Mark Breeders’ Cup release that is signed by jockey Mike Smith. The bidding began Wednesday and will close at midnight on Dec. 11. You can browse the full list of 32 bottles of bourbon and other wine and spirits on the Kentucky DABC’s official website.
4 Tickets to Texas vs Texas A&M
$80,0004. This one was more of a Thanksgiving gift, but maybe a good preview of what’s to come for the College Football Playoff:
Four of the best seats at Kyle Field peaked around $20,000 per ticket in the build up to this week’s rivalry reunion5. Closer to kickoff, you were still looking at north of $60,000 and at least $1,000 just to get in the building to watch the Longhorns pick up where they left off against A&M in a game that wound up closer than it probably should have, but wasn’t as close as the scoreboard might indicate.
A New Pool Table
$272,800. This Off Piste 8-foot American Pool Table from Hermés is the perfect addition to any game room. Let’s get this out of the way: it lacks the Bugatti Pool Table’s built-in gyroscope for self-leveling when the yacht encounters choppier seas. But what it lacks in technology, it makes up for with craftsmanship: the curved wood legs and the way the matte leather contrasts with the shine of the lacquer give this piece a bold and timeless presence.
Also available in a 9-foot version in Bleu Matelot.
A Proper Wrist Watch
$8,400,000. The Tourbillon à Remontoire d'Egalité by F.P. Journe. From the auction description (which you should 100% read in full):
In 1991 Journe – who up until then had only created complex pocket watches and clocks - decided to create a tourbillon wristwatch but improving on Abraham Louis Breguet’s invention with the addition of a remontoire system - a constant force device used to provide an equal amount of energy regardless of the winding level of the mainspring, resulting in greater accuracy. It was the first time that these innovations had been combined and integrated into a wristwatch.
If you’re wearing something on your wrist that doesn’t have a story like this, are you even living?
A Five-Star Quarterback
$12,000,000. The University of Michigan needed a new quarterback and the guy they wanted, a five-star recruit from their state named Bryce Underwood, was going to sign with LSU. In walks Oracle founder/yachting enthusiast/ultra-rich dude Larry Ellison6–alongside a Michigan alum named Jolin, who appears to be his newly minted fifth wife–to make a reported $12 million offer to flip Underwood to sign with the Wolverines.
Remember when all Michigan needed to get their guy was slumber parties and ice cream?
Left-Handed Starting Pitching
$182,000,000. The World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers made the first big free agent signing of the offseason, giving two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell a five-year, $182 million contract that includes a $52 million signing bonus7.
A Racing Team
$450,000,0008. This week, F1 and GM announced that Cadillac would join in 2026 as the 11th team on the grid. ESPN has all the details on how the once-improbable deal came to be.
8% of a Professional Football Team
$648,000,000. This week, Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie–who is just off-camera here thanking the football gods for the New York Giants–agreed to sell two minority stakes (4.75% and 3.25% stakes respectively) at a current team valuation of $8.1 billion, putting them at #2 on the list of most valuable pro sports teams in the world, trailing only the Dallas Cowboys and the rest of Jerry Jones’ Arlington circus.
Santa’s Sleigh
$120,000. After you buy all of these wonderful gifts, you have to have some way to deliver them all over Jackson Hole, am I right? Nothing says “I’m so damn classy” and “I envision Santa’s branding to resemble a gift card from the Salvation Army” quite like the Cybersleigh. Put a bow on that in the driveway.
Sunday Bunch survives only on your support (and just a dash of the blood of our youth).
If you think there’s somebody who’d get a smile, a laugh, a head scratch, or a talking point out of one of the links herein, do me a favor and send this along to them.
ChatGPT tried to convince me that the Sunday between Black Friday and Cyber Monday is called “Sofa Sunday” but I’m calling BS and/or asking that we do not make that a thing.
From a site who takes a cut from every sale swears to you is the very best X in its category.
I’m actually not as angry about the Wirecutterification of product recommendations as my comment in #2 above might indicate. Most lists are perfectly fine and the way online advertising works, if they don’t get me with a paid placement on somebody’s affiliate linkdump, they’ll probably find me on Instagram with their purple corduroy pants from Brooks Brothers anyways.
Item no longer available due to limited quantities.
Unless you gave these at Thanksgiving, you obviously missed your gifting window. But for the special person in your life, I am sure College Football Playoff tickets would be just as nice. And crazy as it may sound, they’ll probably be cheaper. Given all of the history with UT and A&M and what was at stake, last night was a perfect eclipse for demand.
Somehow Dave Portnoy is also involved, which is a whole other rabbit hole I didn’t have the patience for right now.
For those lamenting the opulent spending: are you mad at the Dodgers, or are you mad because there are so many cheap owners?
To be clear: $450 million will get you in the door, but that is just the rumored anti-dilution fee paid to the owners of the 10 existing teams by GM. Not unlike yacht ownership, it’s the cost of ownership that’ll kill you in F1. Experts say Cadillac will need to invest well north of $250 million/year to compete, not to mention the upfront investment to stand up a new racing org and development line.