The art of collecting Anillas (Anillas = Cigar bands)


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The art of collecting Anillas (Anillas = Cigar bands)

Excerpts from How to identify old vitolas by Orlando Arteaga (1984) Cubatabaco Magazine

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Just wanted to share this piece of information which is very useful for those who love the art of collecting tobacco related items. Pictures: Punch Joe’s collection.

Among the many factors that influence the value of a vitola (band)are the rareness and oldness of such specimen; and although almost always the former and the latter go ahead hand to hand, this does not necessarily mean that modern cigar bands cannot be scarce nor that sme classic ones cannot exist relatively abundant.

In all this the actual run of the item issued has an important role to play, that is, the quantity of equal cigar bands that make up an issue. In Cuba, due to the large volume of cigars produced, the most common run or issues amount to millions of pieces. The most famous brands repeat the printing of the same bands year after year without significant differences between runs. That’s why many of them, even though they are old, are not extremely rare.

On the other hand, there are those issued on the occasion of an important event or to commemorate certain dates. In 1978, for example, a printing of two beautiful cigar bands was made to commemorate the 11th World Youth and Students Festival held in Havana. These items circulated only during the days the Festival was being held and the cigars on which they were applied were sold exclusively through outlets connected with the event. This is the reason why these two bands, even though they are modern, are rarer than many older items ranked among the so-called “classics”

A modern cigar band that perhaps will surpass all others in uniqueness is the band brought out on the occasion of the First Joint Space Flight Cuba USSR, whose crew was made up by the Cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko and Cuban Colonel Arnaldo Tamayo. In this flight to the outer space, Colonel Tamayo carried with himself, as a symbol of his homeland, different things including a Habano. The amount of cigars made sporting this special band was really very scarce: the one carried on the flight, several replicas sent to museums and a few boxes presented by the cosmonaut to some personalities.

Another rare item, although from a different origin, is a commemorative vitola to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Cuban Airlines. The production of those cigars had been designed to several tenths of thousands. However, the unexpected came up: the blue mold disease broke out and caused tremendous havoc in that year’s tobacco harvest. Thus a vast majority of the lithographed cigar bands that were to be placed around the Cubana cigars weren’t ever used as planned.

But let’s go back to our subject: Oldness in cigar bands. To many collectors it is indeed an inconvenience and at times cause for discouragement to face the fact that in many cases it becomes not only difficult but rather impossible to determine accurately the date of the vitola came to being.

To me, on the contrary, this is a sort of incentive that, for that matter, is lacking in other types of collecting hobbies in which everything is already known and has been listed in a catalog. In each new cigar band that our hands get in touch with a question mark rapidly appears and along with this, comes the spur to investigate, to delve into details that will shed some light upon our item.

In my opinion, the most important element in the determination of the oldness in a vitola is the analysis made of the printing technique used, and for this a collector’s magnifying glass can prove very helpful indeed. Let’s see.

As accounted for by historic sources the first printing of cigar bands that occurred in Cuba –and in the whole world- was made for “El Aguila de Oro” brand that dates back as fas as 1845. Ever since then and roughly up to the 40’s of next century, the technique used in producing vitolas was lithography, which had been introduced in Cuba in 1822.

Very skillful artisans made hand drawings of vitolas on calcareous and lithographic stones. They only left on its surface, the lines that were to be transferred to paper. The artisan had to work on each stone fro each color to be used in the printing operation and the impressions made by these stones consecutively on the same sheet of paper finally produced the cigar band in different colors, sometimes as many as 12 or 14. The dots or strokes made by the artist on the stone were of irregular nature and not following a regular geometrical pattern, as actually occurs with the modern offset technique.

In 1920, the Havana Lithographic Co., which traditionally was the largest producer of vitolas for Cuban cigars, introduced the offset printing technique which began to gradually replace lithography, which finally was discontinued in the first half of the 60’s. Currently lithographic stones are used solely for artistic reproduction purposes.

In the offset technique, the drawing that is to be reproduced –in our case, the vitola- is photographed using color filters. This permits to obtain a single film or plate for each cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Each one of these plates is used to print onto metal plate previously photosensitized and these plates in turn will make impressions onto paper, one after other, with each of the colors already mentioned, which after being printed altogether will produce all the colors that appeared in the original drawing or artwork.

If we observe through a magnifying glass the reproduction made by the offset method, we’ll see that I consists of minute dots symmetrical arranged and forming a screen or lattice. This symmetrical arrangement facilitates differentiating offset from lithography and therefore allow us to discriminate also offset from lithography regarding old or new cigar bands.

Another important factor in determining oldness is the quality of gildings. The use of gildng is a tradition in printing of cigar bands and trimmings. The most important cigar manufacturers have used it for many decades to enhance the beauty of their vitolas, combining them mostly with embossing.

Formerly, to obtain a perfect gilding, they used the so-called “leaf gilding”, which is a very tin gold or gilded lamina –about 0,3 grams per square centimeter- and which is now used solely in printing initials or letters on covers of the most deluxe books.

At present, the gilding of cigar bands is achieved only through the use of bronze powder and printing inks in gold color. As can be easily and readily understood, bronze powder cannot equal gilding neither in brightness nor in perdurability since it forms oxides and becomes lusterless.

Another way to differentiate gilded cigar bands printed with either metal derives from the application technique, which is different in each case. Leaf gilding is applied through pressure exerted on the paper in which the vitolas have been printed. Bronze powder is applied by sprinkling this material over the paper, when the last of the inks used in the printing operation has not dried yet, so that this powder adheres to the vitola inked surface. Then the paper sheet is shaken to remove the excess powder and finally it is subjected to die-cutting.

With some practice and the aid of a magnifying glass it will not prove difficult to distinguish between the cigar band printed by the “leaf gilding” method and the one in which bronze powder was used. In the former, the gilded edges will appear very sharp since they were practically achieved by pressure cutting the lamina, whereas in the latter case the edges will not appear as sharp, and furthermore on the band surface bronze powder residues are likely to be noted in form of very minute brilliant spots, sometimes visible only under magnifying glass.

Since many years ago and due to diverse reasons, leaf gilding utilization was discontinued in the production of vitolas and trimmings in general, mostly because of the high cost involved in regards to the precious metal and the slowness in achieving the gilding process, which is not in keeping with high-speed printing techniques. This is why when we are before an item in which leaf gilding has been ascertained; we can feel certain that is indeed an old specimen.

The opposite, however, doesn’t hold true. That is, the fact that we prove that gilding in our cigar band is due simply to the use of bronze powder, or more yet, that is no gilding at all, should not lead to conclude that the item is a modern specimen, because the Havana cigar family has always had modest relatives that have preferred to use more humble clothing that those wrapped in gilded decorations.

Regarding gold-color printing ink, there isn’t much we can say because it can be easily distinguish at first sight whether if ‘leaf gliding” or bronze powder were used. We can only add that its use by the printing industry is relatively recent.

Now let’s make a brief reference to another element that allows us discriminating between old and new cigar bands: the gumming. Formerly, vitolas were made with the end of the right wing already gummed to facilitate the banding operation. The gum used turned gradually darker as time went by, mainly when the bands were stored for long periods in humid places that promoted fungus development, which is the cause of the darkening condition. Presently, the bands are not previously gummed and thus the marking of gumming on its ends is a sign of oldness.

And finally, we want to point out that paper quality can likewise give us some useful accurate hints about the oldness of our specimens since its manufacturing techniques and raw materials have changed constantly in the course of time. But here the whole matter is not so easy to deal with: it would be necessary to have an extensive and technical knowledge, special instruments, chemical reagents and the make use of the specimen itself to analyze the paper, which would entail destroying a valuable item of our collection.

We’ll now discuss how to determine the approximate age of the cigar bands on the basis of the characteristics elements and historical information. We’ll take as example one of the favorite themes of all collectors: royal portraits. Here, careful consideration of certain details will make it possible to fix with accuracy the date of the printing within a given period of time.

An important detail which must be kept in mind, is that according to the habit of the period only living kings were portrayed in the bands. The exception to this rule was the result of specific cases, for instance, when a series was issued including all monarchs who had ruled a country.

In many cases, bands were issued to honor an important occasion, such as a royal wedding, a golden wedding anniversary and of course, a coronation. In the case of bands with royal couples, the most likely date of printing will be the wedding date.

See one of those ring bands now, so very well-known by the collectors, with the image of the British monarch, Edward the VII. In any encyclopedia we can learn that Edward VII was the son of Queen Victoria, born in 1841, crowned in 1901, as his mother’s legitimate heir, who died in 1910. From this we can gather that the printing date of this band is between 1901, his coronation and 1910, his death. Now, speculating, we can fix as the most likely printing date the years 1902 or 1903, that is to say, one or two after his coronation.

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  • 2 years later...

My wife just loves to collect cigar bands.Right now we must have over 3000 easy all of which I have smoked over the last 15 or 16 years. My son made A beautiful white oak coffee table in wood shop his last year in school,it has no finish on it. We-she is going to cover the table with the bands,for are smokeing room! None of the bands are what you would call old but there are some very colorful ones! We were thinking of kind of arrageing them by country of origen! It's going to take A while but I will be shure to post A picture of it when it's completed!

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Sorry I almost forgot to say what A great artical this is on the cigar bands.I let my wife read it and it got her inspired to get started on the project! Again fantastic artical!

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My wife just loves to collect cigar bands.Right now we must have over 3000 easy all of which I have smoked over the last 15 or 16 years. My son made A beautiful white oak coffee table in wood shop his last year in school,it has no finish on it. We-she is going to cover the table with the bands,for are smokeing room! None of the bands are what you would call old but there are some very colorful ones! We were thinking of kind of arrageing them by country of origen! It's going to take A while but I will be shure to post A picture of it when it's completed!

Just make sure you seal the cigar bands with a product like ultra-seal,or a glue that dries clear, if you dont it will discolor the bands once you apply the sealer or resin.

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