Today is Independence Day in the United States, and as part of a commemoration of that holiday I am doing a week-long series of the top ten “Made in the USA” cigars. The series continues today as we look at two cigars made outside of Florida.

One line is made in a city that in symbolizes in many way an America of times gone past. It has a unique culture produced by a unique coming-together of people from many countries and many different ethnic groups. It has produced a unique cigar.

The other is made in a city that has no past. Or at least, not a past that stretches back very far. Calling the culture of this second U.S. city “unique” really would not do justice to it.

But enough preamble. Today’s entries in these reviews of the best premium cigars made in the United States start below the fold.

The order in which cigars are presented in this series does not indicate relative quality or rating. It is not a top-to-bottom or bottom-to-top list. All cigars in this list are quite good, all are quite different, and each one is a #1 cigar in its own way.

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There’s an interesting article up at the Cigar Aficionado website on one of the seminars at the Big Smoke Las Vegas event the weekend before last. I makes me wish I’d re-arranged my schedule and gone to this one.

Cigar Aficionado’s European editor, James Suckling, gave a seminar on Saturday morning entitled “Collecting Cuban Cigars.” James was joined by Thomas Bohrer, of Habanos Wine and Cigars in Hong Kong, and Frank Nisenboim, a cigar collector from Chicago, in a panel presentation.

The article has some highlights from things discussed, included guidelines for storing and properly aging classic cigars, background on cigar auctions at Christie’s, and — most important of all — how to know whether or not a cigar will benefit from aging. They also gave guidelines on which cigars are good investments for budding collectors, as well as talking about current prices. Prices of good investments, by the way, range from a low of around U.S. $100.00 per stick up to thousands of dollars for some of the most sought after brands.

Even if you don’t operate in the rarified financial atmosphere of these collectors, there are tips in the article that will benefit your regular cigar collection. I recommend it as a good read as well as a good source of information.