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WANNA BUY A TOBACCO STORE? |
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 What’s next? A cigar factory on eBay?
Los Angeles, September 8 – The publicity folks at eBay say you can buy almost anything on the site.
Now I believe them.
Sunrise Coast Tobacco in Flint, Michigan has been a popular stop for smokers for nearly 25 years, first under the name Port of Call and for the last four years, as Sunrise Coast. Now you can have it for $170,000 – lock, stock, barrel, Padron and Fuente.
Co-owners Denise and Mark Scowden bought the place four years ago after Mark was a regular customer of the store and the owner wanted to retire. Now, he and Denise are ready to move to sunnier climes.
“We’re a little tired of the Michigan winters,” she said. But the store has plenty to keep a cigar lover warm.
It’s 2,175 square feet, includes a nifty cigar lounge and a giant walk-in humidor for cigars (840 square feet and pictured above) and another, smaller room for pipe tobacco, a large part of the store’s business. There’s even a 1981 Ford FMC Fire Truck with the store’s name on it for promotions!
They have live accounts for most of the major brands, including Arturo Fuente (with Opus X) and Padron Cigars (including both the 30th Aniversario and 1926) and many others. Scowden says that the Fuente and Bucanero lines sell the best. They’ve had inquiries about the store from as far away as Romania.
The original asking price was in the $190,000 range, but is offered at $170,000 on eBay. It’s for sale, but not as an auction. Go to eBay and search for “cigar-tobacco-pipe shop” and the listing will come right up.
Denise manages the store while Mark continues his work in the commercial ventilation business. She says they might open a store in Florida or another ocean-front location after leaving Michigan. Advice: ocean frontage is good, but not if there’s another hurricane on the way!
For smaller appetites:
If buying a whole shop isn’t for you, there is an excellent selection this week of Wade-made ceramic Dunhill ashtrays on eBay. These aren’t hard to find on eBay, but the selection is especially good this week with six listings.
These ashtrays were made for Dunhill stores in the 1980s in black ceramic with a rich red panel on all four sides with the Dunhill name. A total of three sizes were made: four inches square, five inches square (which sometimes comes with a lid) and somewhat harder-to-find seven inches square. A ceramic pitcher was also made as part of the promotional program.
From the Cubador:
In the aftermath of Hurricane Charley, which belted Cuba last month, and in advance of Hurricane Ivan, which is slated to hit the island late this week, comes another tidal wave of criticism of Cuban economics from the NewsMax.com site.
We know that Cuba is a poor country, but the figures reported were staggering. NewsMax.com’s Wilson C. Lucom reports that the average Cuban worker earns the equivalent of 34 cents a day (U.S.) or $10 a month. By contrast, Lucom states that the average daily wage in the U.S. is $104 or $25,000 a year. Retirees in Cuba live on the equivalent of U.S. $4 a month.
Prices are much less, of course, in the state-controlled Cuban economy, but the figures are still troubling. It also points to the relatively high wages earned by cigar rollers, paid by the piece, who can earn several times the national average, especially if they can master the larger sizes.
Reading these figures makes me respect them, and all of the impoverished people of Cuba, even more.
~ Rich Perelman
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