Views from a Smoke-Filled Room

There are cigar boxes and then there are other things used to hold cigars.

LOS ANGELES – A few minutes on the popular eBay auction site will demonstrate that cigar makers have been putting their products in a lot of other things besides a rectangular box for a long time.

>> Perhaps the most popular "alternative" packaging for many years was the glass or ceramic jar, which is reported to have been introduced by the H. Upmann firm in the 1910s. Its popularity was immediate and these "office jars" were a popular gift for men for decades.

Ceramic versions appeared not later than the 1920s and a particularly prized edition is a jar for the Partagas brand which does not bear the brand logo, but instead some advice:

"Fumando las penas van pasando y . . . si fumas PARTAGAS nunca las tendras"

Loosely translated, it means "Smoke and your troubles will pass, and if you smoke Partagas you never have any." Sounds good to me.

Jars were popular into the 1980s and a few are still around today although their popularity has waned considerably. Altadis U.S.A. has been the most active in this area and issued a beautiful three-jar set around 2002 for its Montecristo brand, each adorned with a Montecristo-themed view of Paris from French artist Michel Delacroix.

>> Another decades-only specialty is a cigar box that appears to be a book!

This was introduced not later than the 1930s in Havana and Partagas was again one of the early proponents of this novelty. One Depression-era version was entitled "Travels in Cuba" and was bound in green cloth like most hard-bound books of the day.

The "humidor-as-book" form has survived to this day and enjoyed a surge in popularity when mail-order and online giant J-R Cigars brought out an entire series – 16 different brands from almost as many brands – in 2004. They’re still available and each is formatted to look just a hard-bound book on your shelf, complete with a famous title such as "The Odyssey" or "A Tale of Two Cities" or "The Wealth of Nations." The authors, however, are Temple Hall, La Gloria Cubana and Bolivar, or other cigar brands.

The Cubans have also embraced this form again and have a series called the "Habanos Coleccion" in which one cigar a year is issued in a limited-edition in a book-styled humidor.

>> And there are plenty of oddball packages to go around. Altadis U.S.A. came up with a clever one a few years ago by packing ten cigars from different brands inside a wooden cigar mold, just like those used in cigar factories!

Taking a cue from the popularity of Fonseca Port, Ferdinand Fonseca – creator of the Fonseca cigar brand in Cuba – used to pack his cigars in a metal case in the shape of a port bottle! The "bottle" split in the middle, revealing the cigars!

Then there was the extremely odd Cuban "branch of the tree" case. This was used for only a few brands, but was in production until 1980. It was a cylindrical "box" that used lacquered tree bark on the outside to form a tree trunk with a cut branch emanating from it. Inside were 25 corona-sized cigars; the last brands to use this package were Romeo y Julieta and Sancho Panza. Over the last three years, only two have shown up on eBay and both sold for around $500, just for the box. Pretty good for some tree bark!

Rich Perelman is editor-in-chief of CigarCyclopedia.com, offering comprehensive daily coverage of cigars, accessories, issues, people and prices at www.CigarCyclopedia.com

Rich Perelman

1/22/08

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