I have 2 very old authentic cedar Honduran cigar boxes when cigars were only 25 cents each. Price boxes?
These boxes are gorgeous, one is 6″x6″x3 1/2″, the other is 9″ across, 7″ long, and only 1 1/2″ tall. Both made entirely of cedar and have all original papers and burnt work on wood. One is Dutch Masters, the other is Baccarat. They have great brass hardware to open/close and on the hinges in back. Each held 25 cigars.
I have a neighbor who wants to buy them from me ( they were given to me from an acquaintance years ago) but I have no idea how much to sell them for. Can you help with any ideas for pricing these rare boxes? Thanks in advance:-)
The Baccarat box is no older than 30 years old – it was introduced in 1978. Not sure about the DM.
Its very difficult to price something like these as its a very small, niche market and only worth what someone is willing to pay for them.
Cigars were brought along during our first road trip through the American West. Our travel buddies were cigar smokers who, inspired by Clint Eastwood in “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” brought cigarillos along during our sojourn across the Mohave Desert. At night we camped out, and the cigars were companion accessories to the setting of cold nights out around the fire with the endless sky lit by a melee of diamond stars and surrounded by crisp, dry air delicately scented by the aroma of premium cigar smoke.
The American West has a great tradition of cigar consumption in the old saloons and on cattle drives. From the turn of the 19th century when cattle and railroad barons played poker and spun deals in St. Louis and San Francisco, to the turn of the 20th century when industrial giants like Henry Ford, J.P. Getty and Andrew Carnegie found themselves influencing the century that would see two world wars. The cigar was a companion in smoke-filled rooms and at secret poker tables. There was always a cigar-smoking gambler or two on stage coaches heading west, and after that aboard club cars on transcontinental trains from New York to Chicago to California. Cigars do indeed have a travel history in the American West.
“Cigar store Indians,” originally designed as plaques and statues representing Native Americans, became the symbol of tobacco and tobacco advertising during the early 19th and 20th centuries. These statues and plaques were most often used in stores, hotels and outside restaurants and bars to signal (often illiterate customers) the availability of tobacco, or that smoking was permitted inside the establishment. The complete, life-sized figures of “American Indians” were generally used by tobacco-shop owners, with smaller plaques used in general stores.
Images of Native Americans became connected with the sale of tobacco after American Indians introduced the plant to the Europeans who explored and settled in the Americas. Cigar store Indian statues first appeared in Europe, once tobacco was available there. The wooden carvings were based on images created by artists who matched descriptions, rather than first-hand viewings of actual Native Americans. The figures, which most often ended up looking like Europeans in Native American dress, were clothed in fringed buckskins, were draped in blankets and wore feathered headdresses. They did not actually resemble the members of any particular tribe. The sculptors carved chiefs, braves, princesses and maidens, sometimes with papooses. Most of the figures grasped tobacco or cigars in their hands or displayed leaves on their clothing. There were several artists in the United States who specialized in carving ship figureheads, architectural details and portrait busts, then turned to creating figures of American Indians full-time as demand increased. Names of note in this genre of carving are John Cromwell, Thomas Brooks, the Skillin family, and Samuel Robb, who operated studios in Northeastern cities and put out product catalogues.
Modern times have called for the image of the cigar store Indian to all but disappear, but the Native American will always be remembered as the source of our fine tobacco. When the occasion calls for a fine cigar, enjoy one–especially if you’re under western skies.
There are many things that you can grow in your garden or backyard farm that are considered specialty products. When you are first starting out it is always best to specialize in something that is not readily available in your area. It will also promote your status to semi-expert right away.
For example: There are 3 greenhouses in a 50 mile radius of your home. They are your standard greenhouses and have been in business for years. You could not compete very well as they have a solid customer base already, and people get used to doing business with the same people.
However if you had “Bonnie Sue’s Specialty Herb and Gourmet Vegetables” you have just created a new niche. The same people that have been going to Pat’s greenhouse for years don’t feel guilty or disloyal shopping at yours because you are different, plus you will also appeal to a different crowd.
This makes you the expert in the area even if you are just starting out. If you have put together a business from scratch and have gotten it off the ground chances are you know more than most of the people around your area.
I have to insert here it is very important when you are starting out that if you don’t know the answer let the person know you will find out and get back to them. DO NOT give them a false answer as this will come back to haunt you. Much of my business originally came my way and not my competitors, because I was honest and told people the truth and not that you must use or buy my product because it was the only way to solve their problem. One great way to have a support team is to become a Master Gardener, not only will you learn more about horticulture, but you will also meet others with specialty experience.
It was also very hard for me at first when people referred to me as an expert. It took a few years to realize I was exactly that. I knew more than most of the people around about my niche. I now have been asked for job references from many Scientists (all have their doctorate, and years of experience) in the Agricultural field because of becoming respected and being professional and doing a better job than expected.
The best way to advertise your product is to address women’s groups, rotary’s and other such clubs, or to make donations in your area to any conferences that are coming to town if they include your business name on their information. These can include coupons, small samples, or just a listing in the program.
Niches are important when competing in the farm area. You Joe Littleguy can’t compete with the big corporation farms unless you have a hook, or a niche. Look around the web and you will find that this is becoming more and more important because we all know that if you have a unique or special product then you have a marketing hook that can be potentially worth thousands of dollars.
Now I just took a small snide jab at the “Big Boys” but don’t think that they are the enemy. Just the opposite, if you can get a product of yours in their store, then your money woes are at a close.
Sarah is an University of Arizona Master Gardener, and is currently the nursery director of a specialty nursery. She has many interests and enjoys researching and sharing information. You can see her latest website Cigar Humidor Catablogg. Which has detailed information on glass top humidors.
In his essay “Sifting the Ashes,” the writer Jonathan Franzen has the following to say about the smoking habit he struggles to quit: “[W]hen you’re smoking, you’re acutely present to yourself: you step outside the unconscious forward rush of life.”
Beautiful words, with which many cigar smokers would agree. Perhaps that’s why so many of history’s most famous and best-loved writers are hard to mentally picture without a cigar: Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Collette, George Sand, Karl Marx. Not terrible company, and they’re not alone. Some major contemporary writers are cigar smokers as well.
Paul Auster
Born in Newark, New Jersey, Paul Auster graduated from Columbia, then moved to Paris, France to eke out a living as a French-literature translator. He’s been married to two highly-regarded American writers “Siri Hustvedt (currently) and, before that, Lydia Davis, who is also known for her translation work – and his novels The New York Trilogy and Moon Palace are modern classics. He’s known for using the shape of the detective story to entertain larger questions about the meaning of identity, of language, and of existence. But his biggest fame – and his importance to smokers – came when he wrote and co-directed the movie Smoke, a landmark of American indie cinema set in a Brooklyn cigar shop.
Centered on Auggie Wren, owner of the Brooklyn Cigar Company – a sort of existential Dew Drop Inn where large cross-sections of humanity gather – it ponders the random yet seemingly meaningful connections among various people, a major theme in Auster’s writing (as well as of several other major American art films from the same period – consider Short Cuts and Magnolia). Auster’s selection of a smoke shop as his setting renders the film, which is based on one of his own short stories, especially meaningful for diehard cigar smokers.
Edward Whittemore
Here’s an artist with a colorful life indeed – he went from Yale to the Marines to the CIA, wrote for the Japan Times (it was part of his cover), lived in Crete, and wrote the massive, tripped-out series of literary espionage novels known as the Jerusalem Quartet, a work lauded by Tom Robbins as – like a bowl of hashish pudding – and by Jonathon Carroll as a book that
“makes your soul grow.” (To give you an idea: one of the books is about a 12-year-long game of poker in which the winner becomes owner of the Holy Land. That’s just the plot of one of them.) Yet the Quartet went out of print after only a few years, and Whittemore ended his days in dire poverty and obscurity, working as a photocopier for a law firm.
In 2003, eight years after his death, the Quartet was republished to all-but-universal acclaim; Jim Hougan, writing in Harper’s, called it “one of the last, best arguments against television” and Whittemore – an author of extraordinary talents. His friend Thomas C. Wallace remembers his love of cigars: “We walked the woods and fields of southern Vermont by day, sat in front of the house after dinner on solid green Adirondack chairs, drinks in hand and smoking cigars.” In a similar spirit, lovers of fine cigars should search out his one-of-a-kind novels – after all, premium cigar smokers already know that the most immediately accessible pleasures aren’t always the deepest.
John Grisham
You probably know that John Grisham is an ex-lawyer and the biggest-selling novelist of the 1990s, but you probably don’t know about his charity work, his advocacy on behalf of the wrongly imprisoned, his tireless support of less-commercially-successful writers – or the fact that it’s been said he smokes four cigars a week. In addition to writing the well-loved legal thrillers The Firm and A Time To Kill, among others (as well as such departures as A Painted House), he has done missionary and relief work in Brazil and service on the board of the Innocence Project, which uses DNA testing to exonerate the wrongfully convicted. Perhaps all of this is why he ended up on one of Cigar Aficionado’s lists of the top hundred smokers.
About the Author:
CigarFox provides you the opportunity to build your own sampler of the finest cigars that include cigar brands like Montecristo, Romeo & Julieta, H Upmann, Macanudo, Cohiba, Gurkha and many more. Choose from more than 1000 different brands! Other cigar products include cigar humidors, cigar boxes, and cigar accessories like Zippo Lighters.
Any suggestions for cigar shops that are willing to give away or even sell for a nominal fee(under $5) the empty wooden boxes used to hold cigars? I walked into Club Habanos in Suntec, where the lady was all smiles but turned a little snappy when she realised I wasn’t going to spend much money.
Will also appreciate any suggestions for wooden boxes in that size & shape for sale at a reasonable price(~$10). So far I’ve only seen unfinished wooden boxes at spotlight for kinda high prices(>$20)
I’ve been wanting to get the same thing as you for the longest time. They dont often sell it, although they used to. It’s bad service everywhere. People are so realistic….sigh.
Have you ever noticed cigars smokers who like biting off the end of a big ticket stogie? The main reason is that this person might not be carrying his cutter along with him. You have to keep in mind that just like humidors, cutter’s are also an important cigar accessories that simply enhance the all the acquaintance of a cigar smoker. Cigar cutters certainly are meant to abolish or even access the cap of the cigars for the smoker. You have to keep in mind that there certainly are three different types of cuts that most of the cigar lovers like, and they are the v shaped cut, beeline and aperture punch.
The main objective of the cut is to expose and create a base for giving a nice appearance to it. There are different types of cigar accessories and “>Humidors that are available in the present market and so you certainly can find different types of cutters also. Most of the cigars smokers certainly like beeline cut as it is very much common. Most people are very much adopted to this type of cut simply because it is very much clear in appearance and looks pretty clean.
The aperture bite is certainly created to place an aperture just within its cap in place of having it acid off. In case your Cigar Accessories does not have a aperture cut then you can also try to create one by making use of a pen or a pencil. So in case you ever happen to acquire some of the big ticket varieties like the Cuban cigars then it is very important that you do have a right accent for it. You may have to keep in mind that clashing a nice cigar box or even a humidors may always prevent your cigars from getting dehydrated or even intruded by insects or molds or even fungus.
Keep in mind that cigars are made up of some of the fines quality tobacco that is processed well. So in case you don’t take proper care of your Cuban cigars then you certainly may not be able to store the good value of taste that it has in store for your taste buds. There are a number of people who always want to enjoy the best taste with their cigars especially when they play pool, so they always maintain a nice humid humidors so that they can in fact preserve the perfect taste of nice tobacco for enjoying every special moment. You always may have to maintain a humidity equivalent to 75 % so that the moisture is supplied just in right quantity.
About the Author:
Kelly Young is a professional cigars dealer and so he has shared experienced views about storing and maintain high quality cigars and humidors. You can read more of his articles at Cigars
Between the twenty story buildings on Riverside Drive and West End Avenue, 88th street was lined with five story brownstones – most of them single family homes. The street in front of the houses was lined with sycamore trees protected by five foot high protectors made of vertical iron staves held together by horizontal iron bands. The staves ended in spear points at the top and were painted green. Later, after the War, most of the paint had worn off and we’d grab the top section of the staves and bend them toward us to show how strong we’d grown.
The brownstones had stoops leading up to the main entrance on the first floor where there was an unlocked door with glass panels and a vestibule leading into an inner door that was locked. After the War, they replaced the glass-paneled doors with solid doors and put lock on them as well. There was a service or basement entrance down three steps from street level. The basement door and windows had wrought iron bars in front of them. Many first floor windows had window boxes on the sills, with red geraniums in them.
There weren’t many cars driving down 88th Street or parked along the sidewalks back in the 1930s and the streets were always clean. People didn’t throw things down in the streets in those days, partly because everyone on the street knew everyone else and didn’t want to be seen throwing things down, and partly because they were not the kind of people who throw things down.
There was also a man with a Kaiser Wilhelm moustache who wheeled a cart with an olive drab refuse can along the street. He wore gloves, a brown Department of Sanitation (DSNY) uniform and a drum cap like a French army officer’s. He carried a stiff-bristled brush and a broad shovel stored handle-down in slots next to the refuse can. He’d sweep dog droppings, horse manure and other refuse into a pile next to the curbstone with the stiff bristled brush and then pick it up with his shovel and put it into his can. He also had a wooden tool about three feet long with a sharp metal point so that he didn’t have to bend down to pick up paper or cigarette and cigar butts from grassy areas and one April morning just as he turned down 88th Street shortly after noon Oberstleutnant Wolfram von Richthofen of the Luftwaffe was leading the Condor Legion in one of the early experimental carpet bombing attacks over the town of Guernica.
When his refuse can was full he took it to one of the DSNY bins placed along the avenues. The bins contained several barrels and DSNY trucks with swinging hatches on each side would pick up garbage from the bins and cans left outside houses. Two uniformed men dumped the cans through the hatches until the truck was full and then one climbed on top, stood on the mound of garbage inside and the other man picked up the cans and either passed or tossed them up. The man on top caught the cans, dumped out the garbage and dropped the can back down for the man on the street to catch and leave on the sidewalk. (This was before the garbage trucks had scoops in the back and conveyor belts to carry the garbage up into the truck.)
(Originally published at AuthorsDen and reprinted with permission of the author, Herbert Lobsenz).
About the Author:
Herbert Lobsenz studied literature at Heights College, NYU, went into the army during the Korean War and, following Robert Jordan of For Whom The Bell Tolls, became an EOD specialist. His second novel, Vangel Griffin (1961), won the Harper Prize and appeared on the Times best seller list. His latest novel, Succession, will be published in May 2008. Visit Old Time Writer
.
In most major cities in the world, there is an active and highly profitable shadow economy in phony consumer goods that generates (in some estimates) upwards of 500 billion dollars a year. If you have ever been down to “Counterfeit Alley” in midtown Manhattan, you have seen one of the biggest counterfeit marketplaces in the world. While many of us spend our waking hours lusting after the latest fashion designs from our favorite designers, there are a lot of people out there who purchase knock-off or phony items without fully appreciating the consequences.
I recently read a book called “Knockoff”, written by a fellow named Tim Phillips. It was an insightful read, with a number of interesting and often disturbing ideas presented. I was particularly interested in the section he devoted to the trade in phony luxury items such as designer handbags. These days, it seems I can’t go anywhere without seeing somebody carrying a fake Prada or Gucci purse. Personally, I have always resisted the urge to purchase a counterfeit purse. I have avoided the temptation mainly because such an action only undermines an industry I have grown to love. When one considers the price of some of the higher-end purses, it should come as no surprise that some people purchase fakes.
What will surprise you is the discovery that their money is supporting future terrorist attacks in America and abroad. This book has confirmed my belief in supporting legitimate companies. Have you ever stopped to consider where the money you spend on fake consumer products ends up? This book will provide you with some frightening insights. The “black market” in counterfeit consumer goods provides incredible resources for criminal organizations, and these organizations certainly do not have the public interest at heart.
One of the most disturbing ideas in the book was the suggestion that terrorist organizations, working with organized crime groups, use the profits gained from these illegal sales to support future attacks. I could not sleep at night if I thought I was supporting terrorist campaigns to maim and kill innocent civilians in America, or anywhere else for that matter. I am a firm believer in being a conscientious shopper, and supporting companies that are trying to make the world a better place. I will gladly pay three times the price of a phony purse, to ensure that my money is not supporting terrorism. Check out “Knockoff” when you have a chance. It is a real eye-opener.
About the Author:
Cathy Feldman is a long time friend to the designer handbag world and is the editor for Designer Handbags 101 – an online designer handbag resource, with extensive information on the latest designer handbags, cigar box purses, Prada purses and more.
I’ve already heard about making a guitar out of them or making them into a shelf…anything else?
You could decorate the outside, line the inside with velvet, put a mirror on the inside of the lid, and make it into a jewelry box. Or add a strap and a clasp and use it as a purse.
