What Not to Buy a Motorcycle Rider, and What to Buy Instead

Every rider I know has a drawer. Mine is the second one down in the garage cabinet, and it currently holds a chrome skull gearshift knob, a keychain shaped like a piston, two pairs of gloves in the wrong size, and a helmet a well meaning relative bought in 2019 that has never been on my head. None of it was cheap. All of it was chosen with real affection. And none of it gets used.

That drawer is the whole problem with buying gear for someone else. Motorcycle equipment is fit equipment. It is sized to a specific hand, a specific chest, a specific head shape, and the person buying the gift usually has access to none of that information. So here is the honest version: what to leave on the shelf, why, and the swap that lands instead.

The Novelty Category Is a Dead End

Anything with a flame decal, a skull, or the word BIKER printed on it in a distressed font is a novelty item, not gear. Novelty products are designed to look right in a photo on a product page and to cost under $30 so the purchase feels easy. They are not designed to survive a tank bag, a rain shower, or a rider who actually rides.

The specific offenders I see most: engraved shot glasses, motorcycle themed wall art, plastic bar end mirrors, LED valve stem caps, and any tool kit that ships in a molded blow case with 68 pieces and no torque rating. The valve caps are the worst of them, because they add unsprung rotating weight to a wheel that a manufacturer balanced, and a rider will pull them off within a week without saying anything about it.

The test is simple. If the item exists to signal that someone rides, rather than to help them ride, it goes in the drawer.

Sizing Is Why Most Gear Gifts Fail

Gloves are the classic trap. A deerskin glove is sized by hand circumference measured across the knuckles, not by whether the wearer is a large person generally. I wear a 10 in one maker and a large in another, and those are not the same measurement. Deerskin also relaxes with wear, typically about a quarter size over the first 300 to 500 miles, which means a glove that fits perfectly in the box will be slightly loose by fall. A gifted glove that starts loose is finished.

Vests have the opposite failure. Riders buy leather vests one size up because a vest goes over a hoodie in October and over a t-shirt in July, and because patches need real estate on the back panel. Someone shopping for a gift buys the shirt size, and the vest arrives too tight to close over anything. If you are determined to try, at least measure a vest the recipient already owns flat across the chest and work from the vest size chart rather than guessing. The same goes for the glove sizing chart, which asks for a tape measure and 30 seconds.

Boots and jackets are worse still. A jacket sleeve that is an inch short at full reach is unwearable on a bike even if the chest fits, and no gift receipt makes that conversation comfortable.

Never Buy Someone a Helmet

This one is not a preference, it is a safety position. Helmet fit is determined by head shape as much as circumference. Round oval, intermediate oval, and long oval shells fit the same 58cm head completely differently, and a helmet that is the correct number but the wrong shape will create a pressure point on the forehead or the temples that turns into a headache at 40 minutes. Riders take those helmets off. A helmet that gets taken off is worth nothing.

There is a second reason. A helmet has a service life, and it has a history. A used or gifted helmet with an unknown drop history is not something a careful rider will trust, and a sealed new one still has to be fitted in person with the cheek pads swapped to size. Unless you are physically standing next to the person in a shop, you cannot do this for them. Buy the gift card and let them try on six.

The same logic applies at a smaller scale to armored gear. If someone genuinely needs impact protection, that is a fitted purchase too, and it should be honest CE rated equipment rather than something that looks armored.

The Swaps That Actually Get Used

Every category above has a replacement that skips the fit problem entirely. The pattern is consistent: buy consumables, buy accessories with tolerance, or buy the thing they will not buy for themselves.

• Instead of gloves in a guessed size, buy glove liners. Liners are stretch knit, they fit a range, and they extend a rider's three season gloves into the low 40s Fahrenheit.

• Instead of a leather jacket, buy leather care. A rider with a $700 jacket almost never owns conditioner, because it is the boring $16 purchase that never makes it into the cart.

• Instead of a vest, buy vest extenders. They add roughly two to three inches of chest room to a vest the rider already owns and already loves, which solves the exact problem a winter hoodie creates.

• Instead of a helmet, buy a gift card plus an offer to drive them to the shop. The drive is the actual gift.

• Instead of a novelty tool kit, buy one good thing: a decent tire gauge, a proper 3/8 drive torque wrench, or a chain brush. One tool that is right beats 68 that are not.

Editor's Picks

These are the four I hand people when they ask what to get a rider they do not live with. Every one of them works without knowing a size, and every one of them gets opened and then actually used within the month. If you want a broader list to browse, the year round gift guide is organized the same way.

• Obenauf's Heavy Duty LP Conditioner, $15.99. Beeswax and propolis base, no silicone, and one tin lasts a leather jacket several years. This is the gift that quietly protects a purchase somebody else already made.

• Gators Skin Glove Liners, $25. Thin stretch liners that fit a range of hands, so you are not guessing a size, and they buy about 10 degrees of extra range under an unlined glove.

• Genuine Buffalo Nickel Vest Extenders (pr), $37.99. For the rider whose vest fits in July and not in November. Real nickel hardware, and it reads as a deliberate detail rather than a fix.

• Fingerless Deerskin Gloves, $72.99. The one glove I will make an exception for, because fingerless styles are far more forgiving of a half size miss. These are unlined, unarmored deerskin. They are not CE certified and they are not armor. They are abrasion and wind protection.

• RevZilla does one thing better here and it matters for gifts specifically: their return window and exchange process is built for people who guessed wrong on a size, and if you are buying fitted gear blind, that safety net is worth more than any product feature.

• Prices verified August 2026.

What I'd Actually Buy

If you know the rider well and you know their gear, buy the consumable they are out of. Conditioner, chain lube, liners, a new visor. It is unglamorous and it is correct, and it signals that you paid attention to what they own rather than to what motorcycles look like in advertising.

If you do not know their gear that well, the vest extenders and the conditioner are the two safest purchases on this page, because neither one requires you to know a number. And if the person on your list genuinely needs a vest or gloves, go look at the USA made vest collection together, with a tape measure on the table. A gift chosen in front of the recipient is not less thoughtful. It is the only version of that gift that ends up on the bike instead of in the drawer.