This may be a stupid question from my side, but I have been following the development of the thread and you seem to be rather sure that Bitcoin (and the derivative knowledge in how to interact with it) isn't something that your friend values / is very interested in learning. If you're so sure about that, why are you even considering giving him a gift whose nature is BTC? I fully understand the gesture and your eagerness to give him a unique gift that probably none of his friends will give him, but I can't seem to see the reasoning behind it considering your stance regarding his interest on it.
I think that, if we could categorize the answers so far, they would fall in either of these categories:

• Get him a hardware wallet, load it with coins and just give it to him. There are a lot of good alternatives out there - look here[1] for example - and let him find (eventually) the "way" to unlock his BTC. Granted, if he values your gift, and from the look of it, he won't risk it that easily nor he'll fall into common scams providing he'll do his research first.
• OPENDIME still looks a feasible option (from my point of view)
• Create a wallet (offline) and give him the seed words + instructions. While he may not be very interested in learning about BTC (for now at least), I'm sure he will value whatever gift you give him and for sure will treat it with the same amount of respect that's shared between you two. Perhaps catching up on him from time to time just to see how his "quest" for "crypto knowledge" is doing?
  
  

Whatever you end up choosing, I'm sure he'll enjoy the gift (plus company!). People tend to over-complicate sometimes (myself included) when the best gift is always our presence within the ones that care about us. And congrats to him! Buying a house is a great step in a relationship / life goal!

---

[1]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5288971.0