Watch in a Box

Sometimes an ultra-expensive watch just isn’t enough. What’s the point of walking around with a Franck Muller strapped to your wrist, only to risk running into other people wearing the same upscale ticker? For those kept awake by such thoughts, Hermès offers a solution: The Cape Cod 1928 watch in rose gold. Only ten of its Wall Street Limited Edition (available exclusively at its store on Broad Street) have been produced, and each comes inside a humidor box topped with the same alligator leather as the watchstrap.

While it’s doubtful that the $25,000 timepiece’s highly accurate Vaucher movements need a precise humidity level to keep ticking, the box can certainly fit enough stogies for your next chance that someone shows up to the aforementioned gathering wearing another of the old style timepieces, you can always flip it around to show off your lower number engraved on the back.

15 Broad St., New York, NY ; 212-785-3030

For the true cigar connoisseur – i.e., those who spend more on sticks than they do on food and golf – the release of an ultra superpremium cigar is like a holiday unto itself (except you still have to venture into the office). This season, the connoisseur’s cup runneth over with two new offerings.

The first, General Cigar’s Stradivarius de los Maestros, is not exactly the kind of cigar you find stacked high behind the counter of your local cigar shop: Due to its extra-aged wrapper leaf, the Stradivarius stands among the limited of the limited (not unlike the priceless musical instruments that inspired the name). It starts with a filler blend of Dominican, Nicaraguan, and Mexican leaf, adding a Dominican Havana seed binder aged for two years in “tercio” bales—a little utilized, traditional process of packing tobacco in palm bark bales instead of burlap, retaining more flavor and aroma during aging. But the extraordinarily rare, 15-year-aged Connecticut shade wrapper is what truly limits this cigar’s production and defines its character. Robusto major, lonsdale, and Churchill shapes are offered, and single cigars retail for $30-$34 each, depending on the size.

If you spring for a full set of 10, hang on to the humidor-quality box. Then you have the Zino Platinum Crown LE 2007 Series, a limited-edition special release (one of only 3200 produced) by Davidoff master blender Hendrick Kelner that includes the distinctive 61 X 5 7/8 Chubby Especial ($105/box of 3). Thanks to a special Nicaraguan wrapper enveloping its Dominican/ Peruvian filler (aged five years, and imbued ligero tobacco from the top of the plant), the medium to full-bodied stick has a decidedly spicy note that differentiates it from others in the Davidoff line. If you ever needed any other proof of its uniqueness, though, each set of cigars comes in a special platinum case that you should definitely remove from your person before passing through airport security.

www.davidoffnewyork.com

Lighters

At first glance, it seems yet another luxury cigar-briquet; but on the inside, that slim Caran d’Ache lighter has more in common with a handmade super-car than your standard issue Bic. It starts life as a solid block of brass, milled out and packed with mechanisms unheard of in a run-ofthe- mill lighter, including a spare fuel tank and a flame that projects at an angle, for lighting that Fonseca without undue neck contortions (also useful for pipe smokers).

“Our lighters are different; they have 84 parts,” explains Bruno Loehrer, head of Caran d’Ache’s American distribution. But while the Swiss company (known primarily for ultra-quality pens and mechanical pencils) has been selling its high-end flamethrowers for over two decades in Europe to Japan, they’ve been conspicuously absent stateside thanks to concerns about lawsuithappy idiots. That’s starting to change: customers can now acquire the lighters here. Just try to resist buying a Ferrari worth of pens before you torch up.
carandache.ch

High Light

There are upscale lighters, and then there’s this:
Carbon fibre: $1,800
Hexagonal, Lacquered Black: $1,540
High Line, Silver/Rhodium Plated: $1,250

Hot Rod

You wouldn’t purchase a vehicle – even a limited-edition one with a 3.4-liter, six-cylinder flat engine and a sleek design – just to get your hands on a special edition lighter, but the all-black P’3630 lighter makes it awfully tempting.

The zinc/brass flame-thrower – along with 14 other products, including belt, jacket and laptop case – comes as part of the promotion for the special-edition model Cayman S Porsche Design Edition 1. Integrated into the lighter’s 80-gram twin body is a patented CircularFlame-nozzle aperture (apparently for safe use in all weather conditions, including monsoons), a Piezo ignition system, and a window for level control. The P’3630 costs $95,015 – cool car included – and will be available to those in the U.S. starting in November 2008.

Porsche-design.com