There are only six more shopping days until Christmas! If you’re still looking for some last-minute gifts for the horseplayer in your life, allow me to make a few suggestions.

A (nearly) complete set of Kentucky Derby glasses

This eBay seller is offering a set of glasses from 1940-2014 for the low low price of $5,999. They are missing 1941,’42,’43, and ’44. They also don’t have the first two glasses from 1938 and 1939, though those glasses each fetch several thousands of dollars when you can find them for sale.

If you don’t have the scratch to spring for the complete set, you can find nearly any year on eBay. Perhaps you can find your loved one’s birth year and buy them one of those. Most glasses after 1960 are fairly affordable on their own.

Courtesy Etsy

Vintage Horse Racing Games

I’m planning to review many of these in a future blog, but in the meantime you can peruse this list on Etsy of vintage horse racing board and card games for something in your budget that you think your horseplayer might like. These games were mostly popular in the 1960s and 1970s when board game companies increasingly looked to the world of sports for ideas for new game titles. Games like 3M’s “Win, Place & Show” are similar to other 3M titles like “Thinking Man’s Football,” which is essentially the same game. Games like Parker Brothers’ “Gambler” and Waddington’s “Lose Your Shirt” are a bit more cheeky and fun and emphasize making good gambling decisions.

There’s plenty to choose from over at Etsy.

"All Horse Players Die Broke" by Damon Runyon

This small leather-bound collection of some of Runyon’s racing stories was created by the Del Mar Turf Club to present to guests on opening day in 1946. The members of the press were given special copies with their names stamped into the cover, and those copies, when you can find them, sell for much more. Runyon was one of the funniest chroniclers of the midtown Manhattan nightlife in the 1920s and 1930s. He palled around with mobsters and gamblers and wrote many stories about the gambling underworld, which naturally often included horse racing. Stories like “The Lemon Drop Kid” and “It Comes Up Mud” are as hilarious as they are classic. No horseplayer’s bookshelf is complete without some of Runyon’s books on it, and this one is a nice addition to any collection.

Courtesy eBay

Vintage Horse Race Analyzer

In 1979 Mattel was at the forefront of producing handheld video games, which back then were little more than bulky boxes with hard-to-smash buttons that emitted beeps and dim flashes of LEDs. For the time, they were state-of-the-art and mesmerizing. It was during this boom that Mattel produced the “Horse Race Analyzer,” a pocket-sized computer that promised to pick winners in any horse race a whopping 93 percent of the time. Here’s how Jay Cronley described the contraption for ESPN:

The Analyzer was about the size of a couple of blackboard erasers laid end to end, and it existed on batteries, eating them whole, it sometimes seemed. Cell phones, at that time, were not that far removed from what soldiers on the front lines used at Normandy to call in air support. The Horse Race Analyzer was considered a fancy piece to brandish in any Jockey Club. But the buttons were tiny, and it could take an hour to program a race that left you with the chalk, which you might have been able to find on your own.

Despite reports that these devices were common sights in Jockey Club dining rooms around the country, sales weren’t good enough for Mattel to keep producing them. In 1983 the rights to the device were purchased and it continued to be sold by a company called Advanced Handicapping Technology Inc. Eventually, however, horseplayers learned that they could handicap as well as the Analyzer without all the trouble of button pushing.

You can find plenty of them on eBay.

Courtesy Etsy

Horse Racing Pop-Up Card

Whatever gift you get, you should leave a note for the one you love on this incredible horse racing 3-D pop-up card. It folds flat but opens to reveal a full starting gate with horses springing from it into action. Better hurry, because it ships from Poland.

A Day at the Races

No, I don’t mean the Marx Brothers movie, although that wouldn’t be a bad gift, either. If you’ve never been to the track with the horseplayer on your list, then the best gift you can give them is a day with them at the track. Believe me, there’s nothing that makes horseplayers happier than when friends and family want to accompany them to the track to hang out, watch races and gamble. So buy a couple of clubhouse tickets from your local race course, put them in a card and let them know the drinks are on you so long as they help you pick some winners. There’s nothing they’d love more than to evangelize this beautiful game to you while you pick up the tab.