When it comes to securing that rare box of pre-embargo Cubans, your options have traditionally been few...

Scour dealers and cigar stores (steel yourself for that car payment-sized markup), swing by a luxury hotel’s humidor — or take your chances on the once-a-year Christie’s cigar auction, which could place up to 250 lots of Cuban sticks on the block for your bidding pleasure. Then Britain’s anti-smoking laws forced the auctions to a close.

“With the smoking ban in the UK, unfortunately we are not scheduled to have any cigar auctions in the near future,” says Timothy Triptree, a specialist in Christie’s wine department. But the auction house can still take pride in having been the first to arrange cigars-only auctions, offering everything from nearly century-old boxes to vintage cigars from the last thirty years. At the November 2006 sale in South Kensington, for example, a cabinet of 100 Romeo y Julieta Casa Reales from the 1970s sold for £8,000, while a Partagas Salomones Especialidad 1996 humidor went to one lucky bidder for £3,600. Last year, a Che Guevara Limited Edition No. 5 Superiores Humidor, containing 68 cigars, sold for £4000.

The company has earned as much as £100,000 per auction — and provided they outbid the competition, gave participants the chance to walk away with that once-in-a-lifetime smoke. Which would be more than enough reason, at least in the minds of more monetized smokers, to bring those boxes back to the block.

christies.com

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