The best Christmas gifts are simply the things you love.
They may or may not be Christmassy.
And in the collectibles world that means something that makes you feel close to the heroes you admire.
A copy of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, still one of the most popular festive tales.
There’s no denying though that Christmas - and its many associated cultural and commercial incarnations - have produced a huge amount of collectible memorabilia.
Christmas could be a fine focus for a collecting hobby for most budgets.
And with 21 centuries of history to work with, there’s a lot of material out there.
Here, as we start to think about shopping for the festive season, are the 12 most Christmassy collectibles we could think of. Sadly, without Santa Claus's autograph.
1 - Christmas stamps
There's an error on these stamps that takes them from the charming to the level of the sought-after rarity. Click the image to buy.
It will be a shame if the digital world finally puts paid to the the ritual of hand-written, posted Christmas cards. The first was probably sent by V&A founder Henry Cole in 1843.
The arrival of bright, beautifully designed Christmas stamps each year is one of the most reliable signals of the season.
A Canadian issue of 1898 was labelled “XMAS 1898”, a rather low-key way to mark the festival, and there was no regular festive stamp until 1964 in Canada.
The first British Christmas stamps were issued in 1966.
Because they’re so modern and issued for very mass consumption it’s rare to find very valuable Christmas stamps.
The focus on attractive design and the common use of colourful first day covers make these stamps a collectors and gift-givers favourite - many a young collector will have got their start through a Royal Mail Christmas set - means they’re designed to be treasured, so they survive in good condition in large numbers.
For real value you’ll probably need to look for errors, like these beautiful - but flawed - angels above.
2 - Royal Christmas cards
Charles and Diana's names make this Christmas card a poignant royal memento. Click the image to buy this unique card.
It’s famously hard to get your hands on signatures of the British Royal family.
Their names are closely guarded, in part because they may have security currency.
But, each year, a select list of folk do get a personal, signed Christmas card from the monarch.
The number is currently in the region of 750 it’s reported.
Each year, a new card is prepared, generally a family photograph. And, in time, these start to crop up on collecting markets.
It’s easy to see why. Fans of the Royals want to get a close, personal connection to them. And this is about as good as it gets.
Values range from hundreds to thousands of pounds. Condition and the aesthetic or historic quality of the card and picture are vital to value.
3 - Doctor Seuss’s Grinch
Ted Geisel at work on the Grinch, who, in a sign of the times is probably more used than Scrooge as an avatar of mean-spirited, anti-Christmas spirit even in the UK.
There’s so much children’s culture around Christmas it’s hard to know where to start.
Charlie’s Browns Christmas? What a classic! The Muppets Christmas? Yes! A Disney Christmas favourite? There are too many to count.
And so on.
But Doctor Seuss’s Grinch has stood the test of time and crossed over from books to films to TV to theatre…
Original Theodor Seuss Geisel (Doctor Seuss’s real name) artwork is very valuable. A 1957 Grinch sketch went for $27,500 in 2021.
A 1966 US TV animated version of the story has been a fixture on American tellies ever since, and animation cels from that have been sold for hundreds of dollars.
4 - White Christmas
An album of hits from Holiday Inn, the movie that gave us White Christmas.
Of course, it’s impossible to pick out just one Christmas song.
So we have.
It’s easily the most obvious one, and probably the best selling physical single ever.
White Christmas was written by Irving Berlin for the 1942 musical movie Holiday Inn and gently crooned in it by Bing Crosby, originally as a duet.
The war helped shift copies of this sentimental song about missing home, and it sold so many discs that the original recording started to wear out. Records cut using this 1942 master can be slightly more valuable than later copies, making over £100 in the right condition.
Holiday Inn movie posters can be had for around the same price.
A major auction of Bing and Kathryn Crosby’s collections this December looks like it will include sheet music for White Christmas and an original film reel for the movie Holiday Inn.
With its sale date close to Christmas it seems the perfect time to list these items.
5 - It’s a Wonderful Life
James Stewart with Gloria Grahame in It's A Wonderful Life. Like Scrooge, Stewart's George Bailey is shown an alternative timeline that changes his life with the joy of Christmas.
To add to the impossible task of choosing a single Christmas song we’re also choosing a single Christmas film.
You’ll have to forgive us and bask in your own nostalgic glow if we’ve picked the wrong one.
It’s a Wonderful Life may be fading into the past now - it was made in 1946 - it is still an indelible memory for generations.
One-sheets from the film are among the most valued and sought after of all film posters and can make 10s of thousands of pounds.
A signed photograph of the movie’s lead stars, James Stewart and Donna Reed, made $5,760 in 2023.
Christmas movies would be a wonderful focus for a collection.
6 - Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol
This 1843 illustration by John Leech captures the spooky birth of Scrooge's journey to love.
Tiny Tim, Scrooge, the ghosts who change him for ever… the story of a Christmas Carol is still well known and had been retold many times.
Dickens is a whole world of collecting on his own.
And, so is this 1843 novel.
Like most of Dickens work it was a massive hit from the off, a mass-produced work of popular culture that permeated pretty much all of society. Thirteen impressions were printed in the first year of its release.
But early copies are still hugely valuable in the right condition.
A copy of A Christmas Carol sold for $228,000 in 2024. It was signed, two-days before publication, to Dickens’ great friend Walter Savage Landor.
While those vanishingly rare items are the stuff of auction headlines there is a world of less rare originals and spin-off products including film adaptations, prints of illustrations, and commemorations.
7 - Pantomime
Joseph Grimaldi clowning on the 19th-century stage. He was a crowd favourite as pantomime became a distinctively British form.
Britain does have it’s own distinctive Christmas traditions.
Including ones that weren’t given global currency by the Victorian empire (many modern Christmas tropes were imported from Germany with Prince Albert and popularised by Victoria’s family).
Pantomime, which has Italian roots before its 18th-century blooming in England, still lives on today.
How can you collect it?
There’s almost no limit.
It’s an exciting and vital area of theatrical and cultural history that could bring in primary texts, play bills, images, posters, fan art and so on.
Today’s pantomimes are linked to the culture of celebrity, usually of a camp or ironic type, and if you’re a fan of TV presenters and pop stars you have a whole new angle on them to explore.
Autographs, PR material, theatre posters and so on, all are available.
In 2010 a collection of Danny La Rue's costumes, including many panto gowns, was sold bringing in over £40,000.
8 - Nativity sets
Giotto's painting shows what is believed to be the first nativity scene, with St Francis of Assisi leading a recreation of the story of the birth of Christ.
If you grew up in the UK you may have had some sort of nativity scene at home, perhaps you made your own at school.
These explicitly religious symbols perhaps don’t chime with the way we celebrate Christmas today.
But they’re very universal, coming in a huge range of styles from the folksy and home-made to glittering sets made for churches and courts.
They also cross cultures. But, the tradition is Italian, and Catholic in origin, perhaps rooted in a chapter from the life of Saint Francis of Assissi.
There are notable traditions of nativities in Bohemia in Czechia, Bavaria, and of course Italy, and you can collect in a variety of media.
The Fontanini brand are a century old and are a popular, modern collectible version, as are the rather more expensive Swarovski crystal versions.
Limoges porcelain and Hummell have also a history of producing these sets, some of which are very valuable: Hummel sets can go for tens of thousands of pounds.
9 - Toys
Steiff bears have an appeal that goes far beyond childhood.
Though it’s rather a broad category it is the obvious one for Christmas collectors.
Two items immediately spring to mind: teddy bears and model railway sets, both of which have long collecting histories and a lot of value.
Steiff, another German innovator, is probably the most famous and collectible bear brand. They date back to the 1880s, and have been beloved of the British and Americans in particular. Rare and notable examples make big sums at auction, like the 1904 Teddy Girl that realised a record $165,000 in 1994.
The company now makes high-value, luxurious special editions, including lots at Christmas, that may make returns in time.
Many a child has woken up happily to a train set on Christmas morning. Hornby, which dates back to 1901, are the best known British marque, with a big collecting community and rare models that can make hundreds of pounds. In the US Lionel is the brand to look for, and a 1934 set they made sold for a staggering $250,000 in 2006.
Toy collecting is a noble and popular branch of the collecting world, worthy of study in its own right: Christmas or not.
10 - German glass baubles
This 1848 image of the royal family enjoying Christmas is the root of many modern Christmas habits, including the hanging of baubles on trees.
I’m going to presume that much of the glittering finery I’m seeing in the shops around me now has arrived on a container ship from China or Vietnam.
It used to be a steamer from Germany that would be packed with carefully wrapped baubles almost exclusively in the town of Lauscha, in Thuringia, in eastern central Germany.
It’s still the Christmas decoration capital of the world in many ways.
Historic Lauscha baubles are very collectible and can be very valuable.
We can thank Victoria and Albert for their journey across the North Sea.
Now, 19th century examples can make several hundred pounds from collectors, with the best hand-blown examples going up to around £1,000.
11 - Beatles Christmas records
A 1970 collection of the Beatles fanclub records. Image courtesy of Apple Records.
We love to include The Beatles whenever we can.
And the Fab Four were quite a Christmassy band in their time.
In the 1960s, the Christmas number one slot was still a big deal, and the band treasured their four festive number ones.
They even appeared in their own pantomime in 1963, and tickets and ephemera from those shows should be collectible.
Good examples of the most popular years (1964 is rare) have sold for over £4,000.
12 - Alexandre Benois set designs and costumes
A set design for The Nutcraker by Alexandre Benois. This example sold for nearly £2,000. Image courtesy of Christie's.
From popular culture of the best sort, lets add some high art to our Christmas mix.
A trip to the ballet is a highlight of the year for many. The Nutcracker Suite the obvious choice.
And, we owe much of the look of it to Alexander Benois, who designed for Sergei Diaghilev, the Ballet Russe, the Imperial Russian Ballet, and after that in Paris. He very much set the tone in the ballet world from the end of the 19th century into the 1920s.
His beautiful drawings for Nutcracker costumes and sets sell for hundreds and thousands of pounds and are a very elegant way to celebrate Christmas.
Buying Christmas collectibles this year
If you’re shopping for Christmas gifts for your collecting family and friends this year we’re here to help.
We have Christmas gift guides here: Postage stamp Christmas gift guide.
And here: Christmas catalogue 2025.
And, for more news from us and from the collecting world, just sign up for our free newsletter here.
