dstieger wrote:http://www.cigarbid.com/Forum/c/posts/m/1827835/rp-xouts
This?
BEWARE! - My pals and I fondly remembered the 2008-era RP X-Outs at CI because they were cheap and excellent, seemingly totally identical to the branded/banded real thing. You just had to know the Liga codes and what they meant, and you were golden. Also, some like the Liga A maduros aged incredibly well, as a bonus.
They disappeared for many years. Then all of a sudden last summer (2017), CI started selling them again with some story about (paraphrasing)
"these were stuffed in a corner of the warehouse since those old days and we forgot about them and just found them now, and they have tons of age of them!" This is a type of story often heard in the industry (forgotten bales of tobacco or forgotten pallets of cigars!). If you think it sounds quite unlikely, yes, my pals and I do, too, and so do many other people in the cigar world. But, it could be the truth, so we bought some.
Our unanimous opinion: they seemed clearly not the same, and in our opinion were garbage compared to what we got in 2008. They were packaged the same (triangular cello bundles of 15) and even had similar paper inserts (with the Liga designation, etc.), but were, in our opinions, CLEARLY NOT anywhere near the 2008 ones in construction, flavor, or overall quality. Not even CLOSE.
We returned them all for a refund. So, beware if you see the RP X-Outs offered again. Smoke a few for evaluation BEFORE you buy in bulk.
(Disclaimer: notice I kept saying "in our opinion(s)". We're not making statements of fact, we're just saying what our eyes, fingers, tastebuds and noses experienced about the new bundles, and how that compared to the bundles we had enjoyed previously).
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