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Conversation Hearts
Conversation hearts trace back to 1866, when Boston pharmacist Oliver Chase's candy company — the New England Confectionery Company, or NECCO — adapted a candy-stamping machine originally built for medicinal lozenges to press short printed phrases directly onto small candy tablets, creating one of the earliest examples of mass-produced novelty candy with text printed on it. The heart shape and the format's specific Valentine's Day association arrived in 1902, when Daniel Chase, Oliver's brother, introduced the small pastel candy hearts stamped with short romantic and playful phrases like "BE MINE" and "KISS ME" that became the format's enduring signature. NECCO manufactured the candy continuously from its Massachusetts factories for well over a century before the company went bankrupt and closed in 2018, a shutdown that briefly threatened the future of the candy entirely before Ohio-based Spangler Candy Company purchased the Sweethearts brand and resumed production in time for the following Valentine's Day. Its combination of one of the earliest mass-produced printed-message candies in American history and a genuine brand survival story after its original manufacturer's collapse has made conversation hearts one of the most nostalgic and distinctly old-fashioned Valentine's Day gifts still produced today.
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Jewelry
Jewelry became a major category of Valentine's Day gift-giving substantially through 20th-century diamond and jewelry industry marketing, most notably De Beers's "A Diamond Is Forever" campaign launched in 1947, which helped cement diamonds and fine jewelry as the ultimate symbol of serious, lasting romantic commitment in American popular culture. Tiffany & Co., founded in New York in 1837, became one of the most recognized names in that broader jewelry-as-romance tradition, its distinctive robin's-egg-blue packaging becoming so closely associated with luxury gift-giving that "Tiffany blue" is now a registered, trademarked color in its own right. The National Retail Federation has consistently reported that jewelry accounts for one of the single largest dollar categories of total Valentine's Day spending each year, even though it's purchased by a smaller share of gift-givers than flowers or candy — a reflection of jewelry's positioning as the higher-stakes, more significant gift within the holiday's broader gift-giving hierarchy. Its combination of a deliberately cultivated 20th-century marketing legacy and its continued status as the highest-dollar-value gift category of the holiday has made jewelry the Valentine's Day gift most closely associated with serious, long-term romantic commitment.
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