If you were to make a hail mary purchase on this one, what would you reasonably pay?

[NSXCIGAR]

3 hours ago, ATGroom said:

I have a list of over 800 vitolas from post-Rev brands that don't appear in MRN (or on CCW).

I know we have a disagreement on this but the problem for me is that if there were that many surely there would be some evidence of their existence. I've only ever found three--Hoyo Conquistadores, RyJ Condes and PL Cinco Vegas.

That is so few compared to how many cigars you're referring to in the catalogs and documents that I'm convinced the correct approach is to assume a cigar not in MRN was never produced and to only amend that when actual evidence emerges. 

You might have me on the Dunhill selections although I haven't looked into that enough. Obviously, Dunhill was doing all sorts of crazy stuff with many major brands until 1982. I don't believe there were any Dunhill selections after the Dunhill brand was introduced.

I would like to know if there is a post-Rev Dunhill selection that isn't in MRN however. True

Another thing to think about: the MRN book is 400 pages. His volume 2 was going to be 2400. There's a lot more cigars in it.

True, but there's been probably 500 special releases since then, and he's expanding certain areas from the first editions as well. I don't think he's  necessarily adding much if any cigars from 1960-2004. 

[Bijan]

9 minutes ago, NSXCIGAR said:

 I've only ever found three--Hoyo Conquistadores, RyJ Condes and PL Cinco Vegas.

I added a few more to the post above, hazier than the hoyo petit cetros, but with years in the 1960s, 1970s.

9 minutes ago, NSXCIGAR said:

I would like to know if there is a post-Rev Dunhill selection that isn't in MRN however. 

As to that, lots of listings:

https://www.onlinecigarauctions.com/sold_lots.php?keywords_sold=dunhill seleccion&display=all

and 3 more here:

https://www.onlinecigarauctions.com/sold_lots.php?keywords_sold=dunhill+selection&search=

Edit:

Here's one MRN did list but couldn't find a picture:

Partagas Dunhill Seleccion No.151

https://www.onlinecigarauctions.com/sold_lot_info.php?products_id=10510

[NSXCIGAR]

3 hours ago, Bijan said:

added a few more to the post above, hazier than the hoyo petit cetros, but with years in the 1960s, 1970s

Images for those? I would want to absolutely confirm year. Looks like these are from the mid-2000s when it was easier to make mistakes on year. 

The Hoyo Petit Cetros is absolutely impossible to date. It would have to be thrown out of consideration.

As for the Dunhill selections, I'll have to go through them. Many of those are impossible to date with no images and I don't exactly trust MO's statement. And of course, many of those are singles and many also do appear in MRN.

[JohnnyO]

About 20 years ago I brought over a binder from Cuba with different kinds of bands that were most likely pre-revolution and probably into the 70's. These bands were specially made for an occasion or person. In the bands there were Princes, Dukes, Queens and Kings with their images. There was also bands for hotels with their pre-revolution names; Biltmore Yacht Club (Club Havana), National Hotel (Hotel Nacional de Cuba), Havana Hilton (Havana Libre) etc. I also remember a band with Batista's image on it. So in MRN defense there was just too many non regular production cigars being made at the time. From what I understand the boxes could have been very simple or have heavy duty habilitacion. John 

[NSXCIGAR]

2 hours ago, JohnnyO said:

About 20 years ago I brought over a binder from Cuba with different kinds of bands that were most likely pre-revolution and probably into the 70's. These bands were specially made for an occasion or person. In the bands there were Princes, Dukes, Queens and Kings with their images. There was also bands for hotels with their pre-revolution names; Biltmore Yacht Club (Club Havana), National Hotel (Hotel Nacional de Cuba), Havana Hilton (Havana Libre) etc. I also remember a band with Batista's image on it. So in MRN defense there was just too many non regular production cigars being made at the time. From what I understand the boxes could have been very simple or have heavy duty habilitacion. John 

The existence of custom or special cigars has always been around for the most part, but I don't think cigars like that ever had names or would ever have been considered "regular production" in any way. Something like the Uday Hussein Double Lanceros would fall under that category, but at best these are informal productions that are not cataloged or accounted for in any official way. I don't fault MRN in any way for omitting them (it would be virtually impossible to--more would be missed than included) and in most cases, they couldn't even be dated definitively to post-Rev. As you note, packaging could be very rudimentary. 

 

3 hours ago, Bijan said:

As to that, lots of listings:

Going through them all I've found:

PL Dunhill Seleccion Suprema No. 33 (MRN does have SS No. 32)

RyJ Dunhill Seleccion No. 127 (MRN does have RyJ Seleccion Supreme No. 3 which is the same vitola)

HU Dunhill Seleccion Suprema No. 50 (date claimed 1960s but no pics of box)

Bolivar Dunhill Seleccion Suprema No. 134 (singles, date claim of 1977 and 1978---??)

So not too bad. I would want to see those boxes to confirm, but for MRN to miss only 3 or 5 of all the Dunhills is really impressive, and we can't be 100% of the dates on most of these. 

 

[Bijan]

35 minutes ago, NSXCIGAR said:

The existence of custom or special cigars has always been around for the most part, but I don't think cigars like that ever had names or would ever have been considered "regular production" in any way.

Here's a special production cigar made for a Belgian vendor:

Hoyo de Monterrey Chateaux Beaugency (1970s purportedly)

https://www.onlinecigarauctions.com/sold_lot_info.php?products_id=2812

I think you can just about make out Chateaux Beaugency on the SLB

[NSXCIGAR]

1 minute ago, Bijan said:

Here's a special production cigar made for a Belgian vendor:

Hoyo de Monterrey Chateaux Beaugency (1970s purportedly)

https://www.onlinecigarauctions.com/sold_lot_info.php?products_id=2812

I think you can just about make out Chateaux Beaugency on the SLB

I would place this squarely in the custom or commissioned category. Again, date actually unknown but this would not have been a cigar available for public retail purchase, which I think is a good metric for whether or not it qualifies as something that should or would be included in MRN. 

[Bijan]

A lot of this has to do with the rarirty of post 1960 pre 1980 boxes (I'm guessing).

If you look through that site you'll see 3 boxes of Montecristo No. 4 in that time range.

Though a fair number of Davidoff Yquem (discontinued 1982), only 6-7 unbanded, and only 2 given as pre 1980s.

If MRN did his due dilligence then he would have known about most of the observed post-rev cigars.

It's not like too many are going to come out of the woodwork 20-30 years later.

If one really wanted to explore this the best way is probably ask Rob for his source of empty box pictures, and see if you can identify anything unknown that looks post rev. Probably a lot more empty boxes kicking around than salable cigars.

[NSXCIGAR]

32 minutes ago, Bijan said:

A lot of this has to do with the rarirty of post 1960 pre 1980 boxes (I'm guessing).

If you look through that site you'll see 3 boxes of Montecristo No. 4 in that time range.

Though a fair number of Davidoff Yquem (discontinued 1982), only 6-7 unbanded, and only 2 given as pre 1980s.

If MRN did his due dilligence then he would have known about most of the observed post-rev cigars.

It's not like too many are going to come out of the woodwork 20-30 years later.

If one really wanted to explore this the best way is probably ask Rob for his source of empty box pictures, and see if you can identify anything unknown that looks post rev. Probably a lot more empty boxes kicking around than salable cigars.

Well, obviously production numbers were lower in absolute terms but I really don't think anyone took cigar collecting seriously until at least well into the 1980s. I would expect most of what came and comes out of Dunhill London and JJ Fox was simply abandoned in lockers. CCs selling for even $100 each in the late 90s was unheard of. The first I know of that even crossed that was a box of Davidoff 80 Aniversario that went for $1,000 for the 10 box in the late 90s. It might have even been 2000 or 2001. Assembling a collection like MRN's beginning in the early to mid-1980s would have been cheap and easy. Anything that would have been available he would have seen, bought or both. And Rius was a tremendous resource to confirm what was in catalogs was actually produced.

Based on my observations and 15+ years post-MRN, I do truly believe that MRN did indeed do his due diligence and I think it's still safe to say that only a handful of cigars that were generally commercially available post-Rev were omitted. 

As far as boxes, an empty box is good enough for me. I don't know if those RyJ Condes, for example, are intact or not. The box appears genuine and the date is discernible, so I'll sign off on that. As I said, it appears as though MRN got 99.9% of everything out there which is simply astonishing, but it appears he did. I doubt many if any more boxes, empty or not, of previously unknown models that can be dated post-Rev will turn up. If someone has something let's see it. So far, only a handful.

[Bijan]

24 minutes ago, NSXCIGAR said:

Well, obviously production numbers were lower in absolute terms but I really don't think anyone took cigar collecting seriously until at least well into the 1980s.

Yeah, that's what I mean. If you look at this auction site we're dealing with and look at hoyo cigars discontinued before 2002, only 4 have appeared:

Royal Coronas 1 (2x) 1990s

Longos (1x) 1980s

Humidor no. 1 (5x) 1980s

Obsequios (2x) 1970s

[ATGroom]

Yeah, we are still far off on this one, NSX. Your number is MRN includes 99.9% of everything available post-Rev. My estimate would be that he includes closer to 40% of things that I know about, and I would guess that what I know about is likely less than half of the actual.

Take a look at this 1965 pricelist from J.J. Fox: https://www.cubancigarwebsite.com/image/gallery/jjfoxpricelist1965
 

Hoyo: 12 cigars listed, 0 appear in MRN.

Punch: 12 cigars listed, 3 in MRN.

Por Larranaga: 10 listed, 1 in MRN.

Romeo: 15 listed, 9 in MRN if you say that the Fox Special Cabinet Selection cigars are the same ones he lists and the Cedros is the same as Cedros de Luxe.

It goes on...

How about the La Corona Policromia range? I've seen the bands in collections several times, but never the cigars. They appear in catalogues up into the 70s, but, like the rest of the pre-1989 La Corona, are not in MRN, and basically no info about them turns up in Google and they have never appeared at an MO auction.

This 1973 Fribourg & Treyer has more "regular production" cigars, but still lists 15 that aren't in MRN: https://www.cubancigarwebsite.com/image/gallery/fribourgandtreyer1973, and many more if you count all the cigars listed as being F&T Seleccion versions.

These are two examples of post-Rev catalogues that include large numbers of cigars not listed in MRN, but as I say, I have hundreds more examples from pre-Rev catalogues into the 1950s. No doubt many of these were only popular in the states and so were never produced again after the embargo, but as I say, it is a list of hundreds, I am sure at least a percentage slipped through the cracks.

If the standard for "evidence" that a cigar existed is that they have appeared in an online auction, well, that standard is way too high.

Pre-1980 the line between "special commission" and "regular production" is very blurry. Things were produced in small volumes and sold only by specific retailers in specific countries. In order to have appeared at an MO auction they need to have survived until at least 2009, and probably needed to have made their way to the UK. In most cases, they probably needed to be seen as having value by whoever inherited them after the death of their original purchasers, and this in a time when even cigar fans didn't see the need to collect and age cigars.

I don't mean this in anyway as a criticism of MRN. It's the best and most important work on Cuban cigars ever produced. I just think you massively overestimate the extent to which he intended it to be complete (certainly he doesn't say it's complete anywhere in the text). 

[NSXCIGAR]

1 hour ago, ATGroom said:

If the standard for "evidence" that a cigar existed is that they have appeared in an online auction, well, that standard is way too high.

Pre-1980 the line between "special commission" and "regular production" is very blurry.

I just don't think an appearance in a catalog is strong evidence based on how many cigars we know of that appeared in catalogs that were either discontinued or never existed. It's just too unreliable. So while we can discuss whether my standard is too high, I would have to argue yours is way too low.

For me, photographic evidence of any kind is acceptable and the cigars must be reliably datable. The Hoyo Conquistadores and RyJ Condes weren't auctions at all.

I would also accept first-hand accounts from a trusted credible party, for example if JJ Fox said they specifically recall a box or has internal documents accounting for the cigars. 

The bottom line is that catalogs, particularly post-Rev, are far too unreliable. Obviously MRN had access to many of these and some neither of us have seen. Clearly he included many cigars that were in catalogs but that he could not verify existed and consequently notates those cases. So for a cigar to be in a catalog but for MRN to omit it suggests to me that he had good reasons for doing so, e.g. Rius told him that cigar was never produced post-Rev. 

As far as special commission, I don't think the lines are that blurry to be honest. If it doesn't appear in a catalog and was not available for purchase by any customer of a distributor than it was a special commission. If you could only purchase it at one non-national retailer than to me, that's not standard production. It was too easy to have a private commission of 50 boxes, say, for your little tobacco shop in Edinburgh Scotland. Many times they were standard production in custom packaging. Heck, most of the Dunhill selections were just regular production repackaged anyhow. 

The bottom line is that the special commissions I've come across seem easy to distinguish from generally available retail production. If the cigars say "made for John Doe" or have "Yacht Club" on them or have very basic, rudimentary packaging it seems pretty obvious to me that those are special production.

 

1 hour ago, ATGroom said:

Take a look at this 1965 pricelist from J.J.

What's your take on why very few if any cigars we know were being produced during this time are in this catalog? There's a lot of cigars missing in this catalog. No Partagas Lusitanias. No RyJ Churchills. No Ramon Allones Gigantes, PC, Coronas, 898. 

Also, how do we know that catalog is from 1965? 

Catalogs can take one down quite a rabbit hole...

[99call]

Very much with @ATGroom on this.  Like any body of knowledge, I think it's a great deal more accurate to approach it with humility and open-mindedness. All the most knowledgeable people I've met in life, are always more focused on, how little they know, and the vast ocean of information and understanding they've still yet to gather.

As with cigars, I think it's a much healthier/accurate point of acceptance that there is enough revelation and new lessons to learn,  to last many lifetimes over.   Thats not to say we shouldn't obsess about finding stuff out, unearthing things, and cross referencing with others.....it's the obsessives that get shit done when it comes to stuff like this.  

The only thing that i've learned about pre and post rev cigars, is that nothing surprises me.   Loads of people on this forum laugh and poke fun about about what an unfathomable rollercoaster current Cuban cigar production is today, why would be surprised that the cigars of the past do not fit in the neat categories and numbers we want them to?

[havanaclub]

150


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[Bijan]

As another source of cigars take Zino Davidoff's book:

https://archive.org/details/connoisseursbook00davi/page/46/mode/2up

I never considered it too carefully but it's a 1967 book (in French) with the second English translation above from 1969 and it has the Davidoff no. 1 and no. 2 from 1969. And it mentions the Punch No. 1 and No. 3 (I'm guessing Nectares 1 and 3 which I think are missing from MRN), and H. Upmann and El Rey Del Mundo Double Coronas, among others.

Edit: Also Partagas Delgados Chicos and Partagas Delgados Grandes

[ATGroom]

8 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

What's your take on why very few if any cigars we know were being produced during this time are in this catalog? There's a lot of cigars missing in this catalog. No Partagas Lusitanias. No RyJ Churchills. No Ramon Allones Gigantes, PC, Coronas, 898. 

Also, how do we know that catalog is from 1965? 

The catalogue came to me from someone at J.J., who told me it was 1965. Not sure how they knew as it doesn't appear on the document, but I presume it must have been marked as such in their archives. 765 appears on the bottom of every page - perhaps that's code for July 65? Pure speculation. It's possible the date is inaccurate, but I see no reason to doubt it.

As to why it is missing so many famous cigars, well, it is typical of UK cigar store catalogues of the era. They don't list a massive number of cigars and mainly those of their own branded seleccions, with only a few "general production" type cigars.

Different importers in the UK were handling specific brands at the time, and many of those importers had their own retail, so my guess is that if you wanted the full range of Romeo including the famous Churchills you would go to Knight Brothers. Likewise, if you wanted the full selection of Bolivar you would go to Walters & Co, and so on.

 

The idea that the catalogues are inaccurate - sure, there are perhaps 10 instances in the MRN book where he speculates that a cigar exists on paper only. But we are talking about hundreds of cigars of here, across catalogues produced not only by the Cubans but a range of different entities. It seems a bit of a stretch to dismiss them all as non-existent.

Another one for you: of the 1500 unique vitolas that appear in the 24 catalogues on CCW and in the various other documents I've seen, the Hoyo Conquistadores and RyJ Condes are not among them.

[Bijan]

Back to the original question of sealed boxes. Here's min Ron nee'e answer to sealed boxes:

https://montehiba.blogspot.com/2017/05/min-ron-nee-answers-to-blog-readers.html?m=1

 

5) How do you deal with rarities which are sealed (e.g. sealed vintage boxes)? Do you open

them and if not how do you make sure that you have purchased cigars in impeccable condition?

 

I never open any sealed boxes to inspect. I have never encountered any problems with sealed boxes. Beetles cannot live within a sealed box, as fermentation would have consumed all oxygen available. No loss of flavours either.

 

In short, there is no gamble when you buy a sealed box blind. No worries.

[Nino]

On 9/23/2021 at 8:13 AM, ATGroom said:

How about the La Corona Policromia range? I've seen the bands in collections several times, but never the cigars. They appear in catalogues up into the 70s, but, like the rest of the pre-1989 La Corona, are not in MRN, and basically no info about them turns up in Google and they have never appeared at an MO auction.

 

Interesting thread to which I can only contribute some pictures of the La Corona Policromia - gifted to me some 10 years ago by @Ryan and smoked exactly 9 years ago at the Pharmacy with some Yellow Spot. Cheers.

[NSXCIGAR]

On 9/23/2021 at 7:58 AM, ATGroom said:

Another one for you: of the 1500 unique vitolas that appear in the 24 catalogues on CCW and in the various other documents I've seen, the Hoyo Conquistadores and RyJ Condes are not among them.

I think that's further support for my criteria of having photographic evidence or credible, first-hand accounts as a standard. There are several examples of cigars in MRN that surely did not appear in any catalog--Boli Especiales No. 2 and SLR Prominentes come to mind. If not for MRN and/or Rius' direct knowledge very few people would know of these cigars at all. 

As I said before, MRN ostensibly encountered many cigars in catalogs that weren't included the book, yet in only about 10 instances, as you note, does he comment that the cigar may only have existed on paper. Why did he include only those 10 when surely there were dozens--if not hundreds--more in catalogs he chose to omit? I would posit that he and Rius came to the conclusion that almost all of them never did exist. The 10 or so that he comments on may have been Rius saying he wasn't sure. Keep in mind, Rius would have had access to actual factory production records that no one outside of Cubatabaco could see as well as his personal recollections at the time. 

On 9/23/2021 at 7:58 AM, ATGroom said:

The catalogue came to me from someone at J.J., who told me it was 1965. Not sure how they knew as it doesn't appear on the document, but I presume it must have been marked as such in their archives.

It is possible as well that any catalog from 1965 could have contained many cigars that had been available for order in 1960 but wasn't updated to reflect actual availability. I would want someone who has direct knowledge at Fox at the time to tell me they were aware that those cigars were still being produced and sold after 1960. And none of those Fox cigars seem to have survived? If all of those cigars were available for order after 1960 (and presumably in 1965 and even later) surely even an empty box could be produced. Some evidence. Yet we see no evidence of any of those cigars ever actually having existed. 

[Bijan]

7 minutes ago, NSXCIGAR said:

It is possible as well that any catalog from 1965 could have contained many cigars that had been available for order in 1960 but wasn't updated to reflect actual availability. I would want someone who has direct knowledge at Fox at the time to tell me they were aware that those cigars were still being produced and sold after 1960. And none of those Fox cigars seem to have survived? If all of those cigars were available for order after 1960 (and presumably in 1965 and even later) surely even an empty box could be produced. Some evidence. Yet we see no evidence of any of those cigars ever actually having existed. 

If it's from 1965 it's practically a smoking gun. What kind of vendor produces a price list where none out of the dozen Hoyo cigars listed actually exists, and one por Larranaga exists and 3 punch. If it was reversed you could say they were lazy and left 1-2 in.

On 9/23/2021 at 2:13 AM, ATGroom said:

Hoyo: 12 cigars listed, 0 appear in MRN.

Punch: 12 cigars listed, 3 in MRN.

Por Larranaga: 10 listed, 1 in MRN.

 

[NSXCIGAR]

On 9/23/2021 at 5:39 PM, 99call said:

Like any body of knowledge, I think it's a great deal more accurate to approach it with humility and open-mindedness.

I totally agree, and I had that opinion about MRN until I realized that his work may have been even more comprehensive and accurate than anyone could have possibly imagined. 

He was not perfect as it is impossible to be, but the last 17 years has shown me that MRN should to be considered correct until proven wrong. I've encountered evidence of only 3 cigars that MRN should have included but didn't and far more evidence that many cigars that appeared in catalogs may never have existed post-Rev. 

If a bunch of cigars start popping up that MRN missed I would certainly reconsider my opinion. But that has yet to happen. 

 

5 hours ago, Bijan said:

If it's from 1965 it's practically a smoking gun.

I agree, it would be unlikely to have a catalog with so many unavailable items. But why haven't any of these cigars turned up? Especially at a place like JJ Fox? In the early 1960s Cubatabaco may have been leading them on as to what they could produce for them. Perhaps they thought they'd gear up production again and never did. I'm sure the early 60s was a time full of changes in the CC industry. Obviously they didn't make one box at a time--perhaps they were waiting for enough orders to request production and Cuba may have kept moving the goalposts for years. Who knows?

But I certainly don't think it's proper to just assume all of these were absolutely produced and MRN just flat-out missed them. He did get many other Fox selections--why not the rest? 

I suppose it's possible he did miss them all but I'd like to see at least one of these dozens of cigars in the wild before concluding MRN just missed them. 

[Bijan]

9 minutes ago, NSXCIGAR said:

I suppose it's possible he did miss them all but I'd like to see at least one of these dozens of cigars in the wild before concluding MRN just missed them. 

I could be wrong but I think some of the punch nectares (no. 3, etc) have popped up that were not in MRN. And as I said I think Zino Davidoff's book seems to refer to a punch no. 3.

[99call]

1 hour ago, Bijan said:

I could be wrong but I think some of the punch nectares (no. 3, etc) have popped up that were not in MRN. And as I said I think Zino Davidoff's book seems to refer to a punch no. 3.

I was running a little search on the Nectares No 3,  and found these.  Never heard of the 'Punch Elmerosos' before. These also look post rev standard catalogue

 

[Bijan]

1 hour ago, 99call said:

I was running a little search on the Nectares No 3

Found it. It was the no. 1, 3 and 6 that were posted in the conquistadores thread by @Ryan

 

Also has the RA Allones Grandes.

And the RyJ geraldes/giraldes no. 4.

So that's five from that price list that are attested by photos and not in MRN.

 

[99call]

On 9/23/2021 at 3:34 AM, Bijan said:

Por Larranaga Cinco Vegas (1968):

I've seen the Cinco Vegas mentioned a few times, was the 'Cuatro Vegas' also omitted?.  These are listed on Knokke, but I'm almost certain that these cigars are fake, in addition to others they have listed on their website