RobertHively wrote:One of the many reasons to not shop here. Take it as a lesson and find a vendor with better cigars, prices and shipping options.
Yes, but many of those charge $10, $12 and up per-stick for trendy brands that often aren't any better than stuff you can get here for $3 per stick (if you know what you're doing of course).
Oh, the $10-12 ones will have the bands of the latest trendy hyped brands that everyone is talking about. The $3 CigarBid ones won't. But if you strip the bands and blindfold yourself and smoke 'em both, you may find it hard to tell the difference (again, if you know WHAT to get here, and you know your individual palate well).
Mark Twain even commented on this, how much undue influence the cigar band/brand has on the smoker's judgement, and how it's often (but not always of course) unrelated to actual "blind test" smoking quality.
My CigarBid shipments have always been quite adequately packaged and in good condition, and I've got about a hundred of them containing thousands of cigars. No damaged or dry cigars.
Additional unnecessary padding, unnecessary tiny Boveda packs, a hand-written note in the package (oooh, I feel SPECIAL!), etc. ain't gonna even begin to make up for paying 3-4x as much money.
CigarBid is hard to beat
IF you have the requisite knowledge to use it optimally
AND you know what items are both quite good (to your personal palate) and also routinely let go for cheap here. This takes time and effort, I admit it's not quick or easy, but once you have it down, you're golden.
For everyone else, there are the $10-12/stick hype-train vendors (the ones nauseatingly mentioned 57 times per day on Reddit's /r/cigars always with gushingly, foaming-at-the-mouth hyper-positive reviews) who give you schitt-tons of padding, a tiny Boveda pack that does nothing substantial, and the handwritten note that, if it were honest, should read
"THANKS FOR PAYING HUGE MARKUPS AND HELPING ME BUY MY LATEST MERCEDES, SUCKER!".
.