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OK... you asked, so I'll be honest. I can try to describe what I looked for while narrowing my search for a cabinet style humidor. QUALITY and VALUE. These two things were most important in my decision making. First, the humidor has to be made of quality materials.... the craftsmanship should be first rate. Also the humidification device/ electronics should be top notch.... after all.... they will be in charge of monitoring a lot of cigars.... which cost a lot of money. I don't want to chance my cigars on a poorly crafted box with second rate humidification and hygrometer equipment! Another thing thats important is looks. This fits into my quality category. I believe that a cabinet style humidor should be a functional piece of furniture. After all, they are usualy large, and should be nice to look at. I found that my significant other was very happy with my purchase after she saw it up close. When looing at it from the outside, it looks like a quality piece of furniture. Lastly, I think value is most important. Now when I say value, I don't mean "bargain" and I don't mean cheap! I mean that quality of materials and great craftsmanship should fetch a premium price, but not so high that a regular guy like me can't afford one. Custom options are great, but don't forget us regular guys. I found that word of mouth about a quality product influnced me. And the word of mouth I paid the most attention to was from the regular guys like me.
Hope this helps... I'd love to answer more questions if you have any.
-----Tony
Just for the record, I purchased an Aristocrat end table style humidor from Mr. Bob Staebell. It is the single best cigar related purchase I have ever made. It is a true thing of beauty that works just as well as it looks! Oh yeah, one more thing....Customer Service... its VERY important!!! Bob was great to work with, answered all my questions, and delivered on time.
He never made me like I was bothering him with a question, and called me personally to discuss the ordering and delivering of my humidor. I would recommend Mr. Staebell and his products to anyone.

Thank you Tony very much for the insight. With the cost of many cabinet humidors these days going into the $2000.00 to $3000.00 range, The part you mentioned about value really struck home. Feel free to email me at [email protected] and I would be happy to forward a few prints to you. Thank you for the mention of Bob Staebell, I have followed his posts for quite a long time and know people that own his humidors. He is a tribute to the business.

Eric, I think I have seen your cabinets on ebay. Aren't you out of WA? The one thing that has turned me off in the pictures is the hinges. They look cheap. Just a personal observation. Your prices look real good though. I hope to buy a nice cabinet in the next year or two and I've had my eye or yours. ORV

First, comments about what I like in a cabinet. Obviously quality construction is the first consideration. Real wood with a nice finish and a lot of glass. I like to be able to see everything in the cabinet. Accessibility is also very important. I hate having to shuffle boxes all around to get to the ones I want. Adjustable shelves are a must. My current humidor began life as a china cabinet from Pennsylvania House furniture. I bought it specifically to make into a cigar cabinet because it was impossible to find a cigar cabinet I liked. It's solid oak with a pickled finish. It has four doors so access to the cigars isn't a problem. It didn't take much to make it air tight, just a little rubber stripping around the doors. I'm using a medium size electronic room humidifier to regulate the humidity. It's currently holding about 35 boxes of cigars at 68% humidity. Still plenty of room for more. The last thing is value. Like several other have said but I'll put it this way. I knew I wanted a good quality cabinet and chose a good manufacturer. Sure I could have gone to Ethan Allen or Henkel-Harris and paid 2 to 3 times as much. The workmanship would have been a little better but not enough for me to justify the extra thousands it would have cost. There definitely needs to be a balance. It seems all you can find in the market is low quality at one end and high quality/high priced at the other. The middle range seems to have been overlooked by many cabinet makers.

Hello my name is Todd and I am actually in the position which you speak of. I am graduating college and starting work in August and really want to upgrade my humidor. I have had a 100 ct humidor for three to four years now and have been held back on cigar purchases because of this reason. I already told my lady that I would like a cabinet style humidor and she somewhat agreed, but at a few thousand dollars she's going to say that furniture is more expensive. Don't ask me why she would think that. I would be able to get away with spending anywhere from $500 to a little more than $1000.

It's really hard to say what a good price is on a cabinet but I think a manufacturer should be able to produce a good quality cabinet line that ranges from $700 to $1500 to allow for different sizes. Quality and style are big factors. It seems like a lot of the high end cabinets are made from premium woods when they could be made from oak or other medium priced woods. I have a custom made table top humidor that cost about $400 and only holds about 75 cigars. I picked it out and my wife gave it to me as a Christmas gift. But buying an expensive small humidor is a lot different than buying an expensive cabinet. If I had the same cabinet maker build a birdseye maple cabinet with mahogany inlay, dovetailed joints, and a hand rubbed finish, it would cost $5000 or more. Definitely out of my price range. So I settled for the next best thing. As I said my cabinet is really a china cabinet top. The interior dimensions are about 60" long x 14" deep x 30" high. There's no need to line the cabinet with cedar because I store all my cigars in the boxes they come in. I move cigars from my cabinet to my table top humidors about once a month so I don't have to open the cabinet too often. I can check the temperature and humdity through the glass. You'd cry if I told you how little I paid for it. I'll just say that I bought it at a Pennsylvania House Factory store that also sells discontinued styles and odds & ends. In my case, I was visiting the store just after they received a shipment of about a dozen cabinet tops without bases. Apparently they made too many. I bought one and turned it into a humidor and my brother bought one and mounted it on the wall in his family room and uses it as a liquor cabinet. I'm not sure which one of happier.

What do I need? YOu got anything the size of a walk in freezer?


What do I want? a 6.5ft tall 4 ft wide corner cupboard. Two doors, an upper and lower. Upper door is bigger than lower. Inside is open throughout for air flow, and there are pegs for free movement of shelves. The upper door would have a glass center and the lower would be solid wood. (lower is for boxes.) All shelves are slighty angled downward. Built in humidification, with a small light in the center up top.

I converted a small curio cabinet into a humidor. I went the cheap route and bought a cabinet on clearance for $125. The cabinet was made of presswood so I lined it with thin acrylic sheets basically making it air-tight so the humidity couldn't enter the wood. All together I spent about $200. The extra time and effort to do the conversion was worth the money saved. Now if I was buying a similar humidor made out of hardwood, lined with spanish cedar, and spanish cedar shelves I would want to pay about $600 to $800. See my conversion at:

http://members.aol.com/BCulp01/Home.html

An antique commode already comes with cedar lining. Doors are air tight, beautiful piece of furniture. Can be had for about $150.00. Humidification can be achieved either with floral block or for the authentic look a bed pan.