Cigars, Cigar Information and where to find Premium Cigars, Discounted Cigars and even Cheap Cigars

STEALS AND DEALS

Plus: Olympic gold medal earns Chinese track star big-time cigarette endorsement!

Los Angeles, October 28 – “The best cigar you will ever smoke may be the next one you try.”

That’s a line we’ve had for years in the introduction to our Perelman’s Pocket Cyclopedia of Cigars and it’s more true now than ever.

There are lots of great cigars on the market and we are seeing new, interesting blends become more and more available. Despite a not-so-gradual increases in prices for many premium brands, there are some interesting opportunities in our Comparison Shopper spreadsheet, an exclusive feature of our value-rich CigarWire service (just $2 a month!):

Atlantic Cigar.com:
Good values on two high-profile brands this week:

• Bahia Gold White Label, a medium-bodied smoke from Tony Borhani, offered at $115 for 20 Churchills (6 7/8 inches by 48 ring) or $103.50 for 20 Robustos (5 x 50), some of the best pricing we have seen so far on this brand.

• Partagas Cifuentes Seasonal Blend, the new “fall season collection” concept from General Cigar, in three sizes:
> Septiembre (5 1/2 x 49), 20 for $91.14;
> Octubre (6 x54), 20 for 99.94;
> Noviembre (6 1/2 x 45), 20 for $89.94, each the best prices we have seen this far.

Best Cigar Prices.com:
A nice price on a Bahia sampler, a great way to try the brand without sinking a fortune into full boxes: eight robustos, with one of each blend, for just $28.

Cigars International:
Flavored cigars are taking off again and CI is now stocking the well-made Oliveros. The Long Lady shape (5 inches by 36 ring) is offered in Irish Cream, peach, sweet and vanilla, with boxes of 25 just $59.95. If you have had any thought of trying a flavored brand, this is a good one to start with.

J-R Cigars:
The leader in premium cigar sales in the U.S. introduced three tins which should end any reason why you shouldn’t try the flavorful Trinidad blend from Altadis USA:

> A tin of three Mini Belicosos for $25;
> A tin of three Belicosos, for $30, or
> A tin of three Toros (yeah, baby!) for the preposterous price of $22.

Tins of four Trinidad Coronas or Robustos are also available for $24 or $29, respectively.

In our very tough ranking of full-bodied cigars, Trinidad earned our respect at no 26 and it’s a blend to try for sure. The tins are also very classy looking and will mark you as a smoker of distinction. One fellow we met used his empty tins to hold his business cards. Not bad for $30 or less!

Dealing with the devil:
General Cigar’s new Diablo blend will debut in many stores on Friday and Mike’s Cigars – one of the nation’s largest mail-order and on-line retailers – might be having the biggest party of all in their Bay Harbor, Florida retail store.

They’re giving away cigars (they say), lots of snacks, shirts, accessories, bobble heads and, of course, debuting the Diablo line. Mike’s is showing the lowest prices we have seen so far on this new, medium-to-full-bodied blend with a spicy finish and Ecuadorian-grown, Sumatra-seed wrapper. Check out our Comparison Shopper spreadsheet on the CigarWire for the pricing details.

Look for Diablo promotions in your local store during this Halloween week; we’ve for miniature devils running around L.A.-area walk-in humidors all this week.

Back to the Future:
Other than a few NASCAR teams, it’s been a long time since you’ve seen a superstar athlete actually endorsing tobacco products, especially cigarettes.

Not in China.

A blockbuster deal with Chinese superstar hurdler Liu Xiang was announced late last week with China’s biggest cigarette maker, Baisha Group. Liu will act as a ”corporate image ambassador.”

The 21-year-old Liu won the men’s 110-meter high hurdles at the Olympic Games in Athens, tying the world-record time of 12.91 seconds and beating American Terrance Trammell for the gold medal. His win in this high-profile event, traditionally dominated by the United States, made Liu the country’s poster boy for the upcoming 2008 Olympic Games to be held in Beijing.

Now he appears in print ads and television commercials for the Biasha brand, the largest in a Chinese market in which 60 percent of the adult male population is reportedly to be smokers and annual sales are said to be 1.8 trillion cigarettes!

There was no word on whether Liu himself smokes or not.

Strange that in a Communist country, there’s more freedom to express your interest in tobacco than in the “land of the free and the home of the brave.”
~ Rich Perelman

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