Get a large (70-120 quart) transparent storage bin, either the airtight gasketed kind or the much more widely-available and cheaper ungasketed kind where the lid's latched on by two handles on either side... both work just great... and put inside it a quality digital hygrometer/thermometer combo (preferably calibrate it first), some pieces of Spanish cedar and cigars (both help greatly with humidity control and humidity swing buffering). The more full with cigars and Spanish cedar it is, the more stable the humidity will be. Also put in humidity control device(s) (see below).
Cost: $15 for the bin, $20 for the hygrometer (I recommend only the "Caliber IV" model which is highly accurate and can be calibrated manually), $FREE for the Spanish cedar pieces (usually you can ask a cigar guy or cigar shop nicely). For humidity control devices I use little Tupperware bowls full of super-absorbent polymer chunks/spheres that I occasionally recharge with 50/50 (50% distilled water, 50% propylene glycol) solution, plus some 69% Boveda packs (2-way automatic humidity control) for "trimming" and more accuracy. The 50/50 polymer jars recharge the Bovedas continuously so you usually never have to touch them, you just add more 50/50 to the jar(s) occasionally. Bovedas packs are like $3-4 each, the polymer jars are $10 at retail or you can buy the polymer in bulk and use your own plastic containers and save a lot of money.
Adding all that up, you can see how cheap it is. $15 + $20 + $FREE + ($3-10 or so x 2 or 3) + ($3-4 x 2 to 4) = as low as $45 to get a giant climate-controlled see-thru container (read the meter right through the walls without opening it!) that can store hundreds or thousands of cigars. Maintenance is almost zero.
Way, WAY better idea than expensive, tiny, leaky, high-maintenance traditional wood humidors.
SOURCE OF INFO: 21+ years of cigar collecting resulting in the need for many containers like this. Oh, get containers that are stackable (almost all are) where the bottom of them locks into the top of the next one. Trust me, you'll end up with more than one if you're serious... and more than a dozen if you're REALLY serious.
A cigar veteran told me this when I was first starting out. 10-20 times the storage capacity for a small fraction of the price and maintenance hassles. He was 100% right. So, I'm "paying it forward" and giving the info to a new newbie! Enjoy!
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Pudding Mittens wrote:
