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Darin, I have them all !! BBWWWHHHHHHAAAAAAHHHHHHHAAAAAAAHHHHHHAAAA

Well look who's back...

No more Tat's on CBid = no more purchases from CBid.

Been on vacation for a week, Tats gone now too ?

well...........there's that................
the bigger problem?
the continuing degradation in the overall quality and quantity of decent cigars available here puts bidding "pressure" on the other place, and the other-other place..............

time for Plan B......................

RIP DP................

Yeah MF is thinning out to 5ers and singles.

I think we're all forgetting the time of year it is too. It's cigar season, part of the reason has to be that there are more smokers right now than any other time of year so even if it wasn't MAP pricing, there are more hands in the cookie jar trying to snatch things up, which means stock is plummeting, I know my local B&M's have less stock at this time of year than normal because theyre selling more, so I imagine the same could be said of CBID and the mother ship.

I have heard this sentiment conveyed in multiple threads now. I guess I picked the wrong time of year to stock. I have enough stashed right now to get me by for quite some time, and need to throttle the buying back anyway. I guess I will start looking again at purchases around January. If I had to guess there is probably a November and December rush on them due to the holidays as well?

CBID probably figured nobody cares about cigars on this site anyways... Look at the recent topics in the forum, about 3 of 20 (page 1) are actually about cigars.

Many retailers and online sales services offer a free online forum. All of us who post here are providing free advertising. I probably would have never began buyer from CBID if I had not found the forum, lingered a bit and learned. So far since I have been here and before I bought I found out (from you guys):

The brands many of you recomend that I can buy at CBID or the mothership (which I purchsed mostly here in 5'ers.
To compare the mothership pricing,
CBID customer service is pretty good and some contact names
Storage and humidification advise

And each time we post a cigar related topic here, it improves their web placement position with search engines, and by reading a thread you Googled, the top of the page can direct you right to auctions, which equal sales.

Must be a bot.

While I am far from an elitist, and I miss the fact that some of the cigars I used to get good deals on are now MAP, or gone. There are still deals to be had, just takes a bit more patience with the auctions. As you vets told me when I started !

I still get good deals on AJ sticks, Camacho, Etc. Just got a fiver of EH OSOK for under 15 bucks, just my 2 cents.

Kip

Here's where this site is at, at the present moment. Cigars that I not too long ago paid $17.72 for a five pack on FF are now selling for $8-$9 for singles??? No thanks, somebody shut the lights off and lock up when you leave. MAP restrictions have gutted this place.

http://www.cigarbid.com/...Havana-VI-Nobles-Single/

I think a lot of it has to do with brick and mortar complaining that people ain't buying their stock because of auction sites.

It's bad logic, problem is, the brick and mortars for the most part don't want to sell that far below msrp because they feel they are entitled to get msrp.

I've battled saying, you want my bulk business, you have to be competitive, if not, your just going to be limited to me buying fivers of random smokes here and there. They don't want to budge for the most part (found a few guys willing to budge).

Now manufactureres are putting themselves in the same boat... They don't want my bulk business any more. We can get habanos at better prices than their MAP pricing... All they are doing is hurting them selves. Those of us that buy bulk and are smart enough to find deals aren't going to start buying from shops just because they price lock their chit.

Some cigars are worth msrp, most aren't.

I agree.

Just to be clear and I've said it before, I know this isnt cbids fault. They're here to sell cigars. Cbid is awesome it's under attack though.

My dislike is directed towards the greed and arrogance of the cigar manufacturers that have propped up their prices with map pricing and thereby removed their cigars from auction here.

So that has lead me to this point. My finger is on the trigger with a cab of mag 46s in my cart. I read that a cab ages better then a box of 25. I'd like to find out. I hadn't seen the need to buy any Cubans with the deals that were here.

The price is decent. Comes out to about $7 each. Got a birthday coming up, haven't bought a cigar since middle of May, NASA AI race car rebuild is still on hold.

Squeeze, don't pull.

This got me thinking. (Keep it to yourself) a year or so back I tried to convince the owner of a shpo to give me competitive pricing. The owner had told me numerous times how they barely broke even after paying rent etc. I told the owner that if he was would offer me a competitive price I would buy 4 or 5 boxes a month from the shpo. I had planned to do a box split here and there as well as for my own stock. I realize in the grand scheme of things that's not a lot. But it was guaranteed sales that the shpo wasn't currently getting. I even offered to pay in advance for stuff not normally stocked. No dice. The owner would rather eek by than cut me a deal. Oh, well.

I'm a reasonably intelligent individual, however, your concept confuses me.
You want the owner of the shpo who is barely breaking even to give you lower prices on 4 to 5 boxes per month? This does move inventory but he loses money on all boxes. Right??

I'm not being sarcastic, I'm genuinely interested in how this concept helps a B&M.

Got it. So the assumption is the owner has room to knock the price down.
Well, I'd rather have a percentage of something than 100% of nothing. So if the owner does have some wiggle room, I see how cutting deals here and there would make sense.

+1
Except that for me, no cigar is worth msrp.
And, these days, far too many have a grossly inflated opinion of their product and its msrp.

This whole situation is extremely convoluted........tobacco legislation efforts and taxes, the future of Habanos, the rebirth of the boutique phenomena, B&M versus online retailers versus auction sites.............it's a mess.

In the end, once the market shakes out, if I had to guess, we'll be paying about what we're paying now.

That said, I think the successful business model for the future will require diversification. There's already a handful of entities that are in this position. They have a nice B&M presence (some with multiple locations) and a thriving online business. Although they don't have "auctions", they do have real good internet specials from time to time. And (gasp!) they have memberships, which when executed/timed properly, can be well worth it.
These folks have been getting more and more of my $$ lately, a trend that is likely to continue.
As far as auction sites..........
This place?
The other place??
The machine-gun place???
The really lame place where I've never spent a dime????

It's difficult to predict what will happen, but given what we've seen thus far, it's not promising.

The b&m wouldn't be lowering its prices across the board on all of its stock. Just discounting prices to get a few sales that it otherwise wouldn't get at all.

I guess if the guy is happier with not making a sale rather than making alittle money on a few easy sales then he must not be doing nearly as bad as he claims he is.

^this

Yup.