Traditions / gifting
The Best Guys Trip Swag, and What Is a Waste
- We used this
The best guys trip swag is small, dated, and specific to your group. The two things this crew still owns are hand-forged bottle openers and custom zip hoodies, both of which cost more than a shirt and outlasted everything else by years. Matching cotton tees get worn once, which is fine if you keep them cheap and make the joke unrepeatable outside the crew.
We have bought and used this ourselves. Anything on the page we have only researched is labelled item by item. Prices change, so check.
Most trip swag is bought in the last week before leaving, chosen by whoever volunteered, and forgotten by the following spring. The stuff that lasts has almost nothing in common with the stuff that gets ordered.
We judge everything here on one question: would a guy still have this in five years? Not whether it looked good in the group photo.
An item makes this list if it clears at least two bars:
- It survives the trip. Still owned in five years, not worn once.
- You can order seven or eight without a minimum-order fight.
- It carries a joke or a year, so it means something to this crew only.
- It is genuinely functional, so it gets used at home.
Anything that clears none of those is a souvenir. Souvenirs are fine. They are just not worth planning around.
The list
Shirts
Custom zip hoodieswe use this
Expensive next to a printed tee and worth it, because a hoodie gets worn for years while a shirt gets worn once.
Once you are therePick the garment before you start designing. CustomInk's catalog runs to dozens of blanks and the price swings hard between them, so it is easy to fall in love with a design on a garment you did not mean to buy. We went with the American Apparel USA-Made flex fleece zip hoodie. Order a size up if guys are wearing it over a flannel, which is most of the time.
CustomInk pending
Custom UPF 50+ long sleeve sun shirt
The one piece of custom swag that is genuinely functional, which is why it outlives the trip.
Once you are thereAsk which print method they use, before anything else. If the answer is direct-to-garment, walk away, because the print will crack off a performance shirt. Get the hooded version if the trip involves a boat all day. Sublimation prints edge to edge at no extra cost, so a design that wraps the sleeve costs the same as a small chest logo.
Link pendingunverified
Off-the-shelf novelty tee
For Vegas do not customize anything, because the joke already exists off the shelf and ships faster.
Etsy pendingunverified
Hats
Custom trucker hat
Outlasts a shirt by years and gets worn at home, which is the real test of any of this.
Link pendingimage: blank vendor mockupunverified
Drinkware
Personalized whiskey glasseswe use this
One glass per guy with his own name on it, which is the only reason anybody still knows whose drink is whose by the second night.
Once you are thereEtsy glassware is almost always listed in sets of four or six, and crews are almost never an even number. Message the seller before ordering and ask whether they will add a single to a set, because most will and it beats buying a second set. Put one name per glass rather than the trip name on all of them, otherwise nobody knows whose is whose by the second night.
.308 shell casing shot glasseswe use this
A shot glass built around a .308 casing, so the joke is the object itself rather than something printed on it that wears off.
Insulated can koozie
The cheapest thing here you can order a single one of, and it survives because it lives in a drawer rather than a closet.
Link pendingunverified
Personalized beverage tubwe use this
A steel tub with the crew name on it, which does the one job a cooler cannot: it sits out in the open where everyone can see it.
Personalized cocktail glasseswe use this
One glass per guy with his name on it, in a shape that suits a mixed drink rather than whiskey, which is the only reason to own both.
Etsy pending
Personalized flaskswe use this
One per guy with his own name on it, which is why these get kept instead of left in a hotel room.
Keepsakes
Hand-forged engraved bottle openerswe use this
Engraved with the trip number and the year it started, and forged steel means there is nothing on it to wear out.
Once you are thereEngrave the founding year, not the current one. Ours read the trip number plus the year it all started, which turns a bottle opener into a record of how long this has been going. A current year makes it a souvenir of one weekend. Forged pieces are made to order, so give the smith four to six weeks and confirm the engraving text in writing before they start.
Custom embroidered trip patcheswe use this
The longest-running item on this list, ordered most years since at least 2013.
Once you are thereThree inches across with a merrowed black edge is the size that works. Smaller loses any detail, bigger stops fitting on a hat or a jacket pocket. Keep the design to a few flat colours, since embroidery cannot hold gradients or thin lines. Iron-on backing is fine for a jacket that never gets washed hard, otherwise ask for sew-on.
Link pendingimage: blank vendor mockup
Two-sided custom challenge coinswe use this
Coins survive where shirts do not, because they live in a drawer rather than a closet and nobody throws one away.
Once you are thereOrder more than you need. We went ten deep for seven guys, and the spares are the whole point: somebody misses a year, somebody brings a new guy, somebody loses theirs. Reorders mean a second setup charge and a coin that never quite matches, so overshoot the first time. Two-sided costs barely more than one and gives you room for the joke on the back.
See the one we boughtimage: blank vendor mockup
Games
Custom branded poker chips
Priced these out for the trip tournament and never pulled the trigger, so this is research rather than a recommendation.
Link pendingimage: blank vendor mockupunverified
Custom deck of playing cards
Put faces on the court cards and it stops being a deck and starts being a running joke.
Link pendingunverified
Why there are no prices
Because a price nobody maintains starts lying.
Ceramic chip vendors and sublimation printers quote per design and per quantity rather than publishing rate cards, so most of this list has no number anybody could stand behind. The rest would be a figure from whenever we last looked, sitting on the page for years afterwards being wrong. Neither is worth having, so the list carries no prices and tells you what each thing is for instead.
The one rule that decides everything
The joke has to be unrepeatable.
A shirt that says the destination and the year is a souvenir, and a stranger could wear it without lying. A shirt referencing something that happened on the 2019 trip cannot be worn by anyone outside the group, which is exactly why the group keeps it.
This is also why the swag question and the tradition question are the same question. Swag for a first-time trip is decoration. Swag for a trip in its twentieth year is a record.
This is a running list, updated as we get quotes and try things. Researched July 2026.
Questions people actually ask
What is the best swag for a guys trip?
Something small, dated, and useless to anyone outside the group. The two we have bought repeatedly are hand-forged bottle openers, which get used at home for years, and custom zip hoodies, which cost about sixty-four dollars a piece and still get worn. Year-stamped ceramic chips are the cheapest way into an annual keepsake, though we have priced them rather than bought them.
Are matching shirts for a guys trip worth it?
They work for the first night and then live in a drawer. That is an acceptable trade if you keep them cheap, but do not expect a shirt to become a keepsake. If you want something that lasts, spend the same money on one durable dated item instead of a shirt each.
What guys trip swag do people actually keep?
Things that are small, functional, or dated. Hats and koozies get kept because they get used at home. Challenge coins and chips get kept because they mark a specific year. Shirts and one-off souvenirs generally do not, because they only work in the context of the trip.