Sunday, August 20 2006
The cigar industry has lost another giant. Stanford Newman, who joined his father J.C. in the family cigar business in 1934, passed away in Tampa, Florida last Thursday (August 17) at age 90. Newman suffered cardiac arrest while at the J.C. Newman Cigar Company offices on the previous Tuesday.
Among Newman's many accomplishments were the introduction of Cameroon tobacco as wrapper leaf for premium cigars and the formation of a partnership with a then little-known cigar maker named Carlos Fuente. He lived to see his sons and a grandson enter a business his father began in Cleveland, Ohio in 1895.
Fifteen years isn't that long ago, but it's ancient history as far as cigars go.
That's because 1991 was well before the height of the late-90s Cigar Boom, which completely changed not only the status, but also the price structure of premium cigars in the U.S.
Sure, there are many fine value brands available today, but the whole value proposition for cigars has changed in the last decade and a half. Consider that in 1991, the nation's leading premium cigar was - as now - Macanudo. A box of 25 elegant Baron de Rothschilds (6 1/2 inches by 42 ring) had a street price as low as $45.95, depending on local tobacco taxes. Those were the days.
Accounting for inflation, that same box would cost $68.24 today, but the lowest price we found is $84.95.
Among other examples, a box of Arturo Fuente 8-5-8 (6 x 47) could be found as low as $25.95 and marked up for inflation only, would cost $38.24 today. The best price we've seen of late is $87.00, a 335% increase!
Then again, maybe today's prices will look like a bargain in comparison to those in 2021, when Dominican, Honduran and Nicaraguan-made brands compete for shelf space against cigars from a post-embargo Cuba!
Opposition to California Proposition 86, which would place a $2.60 per pack tax on cigarettes and raise state taxes on cigars from the current 46.76% of wholesale to an estimated 135%, is forming. One group which opposes the initiative is law enforcement.
In a July 23 USA Today article entitled "California cigarette tax could skyrocket," reporter William Welsh noted: "Steve Remige, president of the union that represents Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies and investigators, says a big tax increase would allow cigarette smuggling to become a new profit source for violent gangs. That is why his organization opposes the tax increase.
"'This is going to make tobacco products in general an avenue for crime,' he says. 'It will be another burden on law enforcement.'"
He isn't kidding. In high-tax Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported earlier this year that it has more than 70 major tobacco smuggling cases under active investigation.
Short fillers: Whats the most valuable cigar on the U.S. market? Fuente Fuente Opus X? Padron 1926 Series 40th Anniversary Torpedoes? Neither. In an online auction at CigarBid.com, a single Gurkha His Majestys Reserve Churchill (7 1/2 x 52 in a glass tube), infused with Louis XIII Cognac, was sold for $186! At virtually the same time, another auction of Padron 40ths on CigarAuctioneer.com went for a high of $45.00 and average of $35.18 for the 40 cigars sold . . . Habanos S.A. announced that two new humidors promised at the Festival del Habano in February are finally shipping: the Habanos Collection book-style humidor featuring a new size of Trinidad (500 units of 20 cigars each were made) and a special H. Upmann humidor that copies a mid-20th Century design and includes 50 custom-size cigars, of which only 200 were created . . . find our latest tasting review, of two terrific brands from Los Angeles-area distributors - Garo Habano and JM's Dominican - in our News & Views archives.
- Rich Perelman in Los Angeles
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Heard in the Humidor is a publication of Perelman, Pioneer & Company.
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