Price per gram by Marca and Vitola

[Vitola Corleone]

Any tables floating around that list price per gram (or price per cm^3 or in^3) for various cigars? 

I.e. a massive spreadsheet, with factory vitolas in the rows and marcas in the columns, and the entries are $/g or $/cm^3.

Purpose: idle curiosity, and also to partially moneyball my cigar purchases. 

A bit of googling and searching this forum did not turn up anything so I thought I'd ask.

[NSXCIGAR]

All marcas differ and now more than ever models within marcas differ. And what price do you use? CUC prices are not proportional to worldwide prices. 

You'll have to calculate manually. It's not hard. Use the table in the reFOHrence sub forum and divide by the price you have.

Generally, I've found price per gram is consistent within marcas for regular production but in the last 1-2 years this has become less true.

[Bijan]

I have it calculated for all the boxes I've bought using the official weights. Varies from $0.46/g for RyJ Mille Fleurs to $2.67/g for Cohiba Lanceros. Most cigars closer to $1 (+-$0.30).

[saltbox]

I've been doing this, out of my own curiosity, based on approximate volume since it's an easier metric to figure out at scale than weight. With many vitolas differing from each other in flavor profile in varying ways, it ends up not being a primary factor in determining which ones I'll buy, but it's interesting to compare $/in^3 and run through the mental exercise of if certain vitolas are worth the premium.

For example, Cohiba Lanceros, Siglo VI, and Secretos net out at about the same $/in^3, and at about 50% more than the Robusto.

$/in^3 is also dependent on how close to your fingers you're willing to smoke, which can skew the value towards thinner ring gauges and longer lengths. Tossing a Siglo VI with an inch remaining is 87% more volume of tobacco thrown away than tossing a Lancero with an inch remaining. Smoking a HUHC down from 1in left to 0.5in left gives you 20% more cigar, but doing the same with a Sir Winston is only 8% more cigar.

At the end of the day it's definitely overthinking things, but it's fun to overthink things sometimes.

[Vitola Corleone]

11 minutes ago, philipl said:

With many vitolas different from each other in flavor profile in varying ways, it ends up not being a primary factor in determining which ones I'll buy, but it's interesting to compare $/in^3 and run through the mental exercise of if certain vitolas are worth the premium.

Exactly -- R&J mf and Cola are very different, & there is no shortage of reasons to pay the premium for the latter. But $/g (or $/hr of smoking) puts a bound on it. Based on Bijan's calculation you can get ~2 Colas, or ~15 mf's. Are colas *that* much better? Maybe, but at least now you know the question you have to answer. 

It's also interesting for idle speculation about what HSA is doing. If $/g within marca is (or was) consistent, per NSX's observation, but some cigars within marca have much higher demand, how close can they be to profit maximization? Yes, they're communists, but communists also like more money more than less money.

What I don't know is how the blend of one stick can be translated into another, or how much expertise it takes to roll various vitolas. E.g. I don't know how many Wide churchills you could make from the tobacco in a box of MF's, if any, and whether MF's can be rolled by less experienced rollers. If, for the sake of argument, it's 1:1, you could make 16.5 WC's from a box of 25 MF's. At prevailing prices/cigar that would fetch almost 50% more money. 

[Ash Bridges]

1 hour ago, philipl said:

At the end of the day it's definitely overthinking things, but it's fun to overthink things sometimes.

I'm pretty sure overthinking things is a prerequisite to a serious CC affinity.

[TobaccoRoad]

1 hour ago, Ash Bridges said:

I'm pretty sure overthinking things is a prerequisite to a serious CC affinity.

I'm relieved that I'm not the only one who overthinks things. I've got a spreadsheet with my very modest collection listed out with per cigar, per volume and now thanks to the info I found on FOH, per gram costs automatically calculated. 

[El Presidente]

2 hours ago, Vitola Corleone said:

What I don't know is how the blend of one stick can be translated into another, or how much expertise it takes to roll various vitolas. 

In terms of cost proportionality it can e a little surprising. 

The bottom are not too far off and based on NC. 

The all in cost to deliver a mareva is $.98

The all in cost to deliver a Double Robusto is $1.37. 

End Pricing on both?

I think that is why there are so many large gauged cigars coming out. The ROI is so much better (in regular production). 

[zigarrenziggy]

Great topic! Really is the only relevant metric

[Bijan]

10 minutes ago, zigarrenziggy said:

Great topic! Really is the only relevant metric

I find cost per average smoking time works even better for me. But that varies a lot person to person.

[NSXCIGAR]

3 hours ago, Bijan said:

I have it calculated for all the boxes I've bought using the official weights. Varies from $0.46/g for RyJ Mille Fleurs to $2.67/g for Cohiba Lanceros. Most cigars closer to $1 (+-$0.30).

I believe HU Regalias would slightly edge out the RyJ MF.

[Bijan]

10 minutes ago, NSXCIGAR said:

I believe HU Regalias would slightly edge out the RyJ MF.

This was for boxes I purchased this year and depended a lot on vendors and any specials. Haven't bought a box of Regalias in 5 years or so. That and Majestics. Not a fan of Upmann cheapies...

[Vitola Corleone]

1 hour ago, El Presidente said:

In terms of cost proportionality it can e a little surprising. 

The bottom are not too far off and based on NC. 

The all in cost to deliver a mareva is $.98

The all in cost to deliver a Double Robusto is $1.37. 
 

Suggests it is a high fixed/low variable cost operation. Almost 2x tobacco -> 40% cost increase. The tobacco is not the predominant factor in cost, which yes is surprising. Thanks for the insight. 

[SmokyFontaine]

I've got a few tent peg Punch Punch that work out to be a great monetary value. They're about 3lbs each and are unsmokeable, but by God, price per gram is amazing!

[Vitola Corleone]

2 minutes ago, SmokyFontaine said:

I've got a few tent peg Punch Punch that work out to be a great monetary value. They're about 3lbs each and are unsmokeable, but by God, price per gram is amazing!

You have to put them in a glass of water inside your fridge mate 

[NSXCIGAR]

2 hours ago, Bijan said:

This was for boxes I purchased this year and depended a lot on vendors and any specials. Haven't bought a box of Regalias in 5 years or so. That and Majestics. Not a fan of Upmann cheapies...

It's close. Very close. But the Regalias are generally a bit cheaper with the same vitola. CUC price is cheaper. The Majestics are slightly smaller than a Marevas by mass and are about the same price as the RyJ MF. 

I also am not a fan of the cheaper Upmanns although I find the Majestics smokeable if it's all I have. Epicures and Regalias are a hard pass as well as the tubos.

[LordAnubis]

I started making this...

Didnt get past that though.. got busy with real work ? My intention was to go through each vitola group basically.

[saltbox]

2 hours ago, Vitola Corleone said:

Suggests it is a high fixed/low variable cost operation. Almost 2x tobacco -> 40% cost increase. The tobacco is not the predominant factor in cost, which yes is surprising. Thanks for the insight. 

I don't know enough about the details of the operations behind the scenes, but I imagine that cost calculation also depends on how you do the math.

As an extremely simplified example, imagine you're starting from scratch and you want to sell cigars made of nothing but volado leaves. You gotta pay for the land, growth, fermentation, maintenance, and rolling, etc, and maybe at the end of the day when you divide the total cost of all of that by the total number of cigars you've rolled, you net out at $2/cigar.

But now you've got a bunch of ligero and seco leaves that were grown, and the fixed costs of land and growth have already been covered by those other cigars. For some smaller incremental cost to pay for the extra effort of fermenting more leaves and rolling them, you could churn out another x cigars with that incremental cost averaging out to, say, $0.20/cigar.

I could be wrong, but my guess is the calculation of $0.98 per mareva and $1.37 per double robusto has some fussing with the numbers to attribute proportions of the fixed costs to them, and if a manufacturer decided to stop selling those marevas completely the cost to sell a double robusto would also increase as they took on more of a share of the fixed costs. I do have more of an understanding of NC cigars than CC, though, and it's possible my logic doesn't apply to CCs depending on how they come up with their blends.

[NSXCIGAR]

13 minutes ago, philipl said:

I could be wrong, but my guess is the calculation of $0.98 per mareva and $1.37 per double robusto has some fussing with the numbers to attribute proportions of the fixed costs to them, and if a manufacturer decided to stop selling those marevas completely the cost to sell a double robusto would also increase as they took on more of a share of the fixed costs...

I think "cost to deliver" is all you need to know. That's the unit cost on HSA's end. After everyone is paid (or not I suppose). 90% of the difference in price from Marevas to Maravillas is due to wrapper cost. Smaller cigars will always be made because most wrapper leaf is too small for large cigars. Filler leaf is much, much cheaper than wrapper.

So it's not a econometric decision to produce large cigars over small cigars. The raw materials dictate what cigars are produced. I think @El Presidente is correct in assuming more "large" cigars are being produced but I think it's actually just large RG cigars, not cigars like Double Robustos necessarily. While a smaller wrapper leaf can't roll a Sublimes you can make a Montescos with it. Or Mag 54, Topes, Vigia and other fatties that are less than 6" long. I think that's been the real trend in the last 5 years: 52+ RG/<6.0". 

[djrey]

There is another aspect to look at here too. $/enjoyment(time). For example, When I smoke a partagas short, BCJ or HUHC I can figure about an hour of enjoyment. I smoke slowly and find it is about the perfect amount of time for my enjoyment. Now if we go to robustos, I usually clock in about an hour and 15 min. For me I assume this is because the larger ring demands more puffs to keep an even burn, not sure. So even though you have a considerable amount more tobacco, the time to smoke does not increase proportionately. If a robusto weighted twice that of a minuto you should theoretically have twice the smoke time. We all know this is not the case.  

So if a Partagas Short was $5 you are at $125 for 25 hours of enjoyment and a D4 was $10 you are at $250 for 31.25 hours of enjoyment. The short provides $5/1 hour of smoke time where the D4 is $8/1 hour of smoke time. Obviously the gap would increase tremendously with more expensive brands such as PLPC vs Siglo II. So you ask yourself, is each minute/hour of smoking experience worth "x" amount more. Just another way to look at it. 

[vhampl03]

Another metric is not just time but absolute enjoyment....I’d trade two ERDM CX for a Medio Siglo any day...not sure the weight per $ but my simplistic observation (for me at least) is that the tastier sticks cost more..

[NSXCIGAR]

11 hours ago, djrey said:

For example, When I smoke a partagas short, BCJ or HUHC I can figure about an hour of enjoyment

You're correct--mass of the cigar isn't proportional to smoking time. Length is the primary determiner of smoking time. PLPC has 20% more tobacco than a PLMC but gives you much less smoking time, hence why it is such a great value. 

[TobaccoRoad]

16 hours ago, djrey said:

There is another aspect to look at here too. $/enjoyment(time). For example, When I smoke a partagas short, BCJ or HUHC I can figure about an hour of enjoyment. I smoke slowly and find it is about the perfect amount of time for my enjoyment. Now if we go to robustos, I usually clock in about an hour and 15 min. For me I assume this is because the larger ring demands more puffs to keep an even burn, not sure. So even though you have a considerable amount more tobacco, the time to smoke does not increase proportionately. If a robusto weighted twice that of a minuto you should theoretically have twice the smoke time. We all know this is not the case.  

So if a Partagas Short was $5 you are at $125 for 25 hours of enjoyment and a D4 was $10 you are at $250 for 31.25 hours of enjoyment. The short provides $5/1 hour of smoke time where the D4 is $8/1 hour of smoke time. Obviously the gap would increase tremendously with more expensive brands such as PLPC vs Siglo II. So you ask yourself, is each minute/hour of smoking experience worth "x" amount more. Just another way to look at it. 

I'd never thought of it this way. But this metric is definitely worth a couple more columns on my spreadsheet. All things being equal. Money spent per hour of enjoyment is definitely the final arbiter of value. Of course with cigars, especially cuban cigars, all things are never equal...

[BTWheezy]

On 11/2/2020 at 2:58 PM, NSXCIGAR said:

All marcas differ and now more than ever models within marcas differ. And what price do you use? CUC prices are not proportional to worldwide prices. 

You'll have to calculate manually. It's not hard. Use the table in the reFOHrence sub forum and divide by the price you have.

Generally, I've found price per gram is consistent within marcas for regular production but in the last 1-2 years this has become less true.

@NSXCIGAR - has the thought of density crossed your radar?  An understanding of mass/volume might shed some light on overfilled (aka plugged) cigars, wouldn’t it?  Zeroing in on a specific density range could potentially shed light on the subjective quality of draw.  Granted, one would need this data over time, but still interesting and helpful for many. 

[Bijan]

15 minutes ago, BTWheezy said:

@NSXCIGAR - has the thought of density crossed your radar?  An understanding of mass/volume might shed some light on overfilled (aka plugged) cigars, wouldn’t it?  Zeroing in on a specific density range could potentially shed light on the subjective quality of draw.  Granted, one would need this data over time, but still interesting and helpful for many. 

This is data you'd have to get in practice by weighing a bunch of cigars over multiple boxes. The weights all these calculation in this thread are based on are nominal/official weights and the real typical weight and weight distribution for any particular vitola might differ considerably.