From Rich Perelman at Cigar Cyclopedia:

Who can doubt that fact is stranger than fiction?

A tale that would be rejected as too fanciful in Hollywood actually took place, beginning in East Brunswick, New Jersey and Tampa, Florida in 1999.

Paul Magier, for just three years the owner of a tiny cigar company called Puros de Armando Ramos, closed a deal to buy 46,000 pounds of tobacco for $2.5 million, an incredible $54.35 per pound.

Expensive?  Yes.  Did he overpay because of lack of experience?  No.

This tobacco was special.

It was Cuban.

And it was legal.

Really.

[more…]

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.