Fake lighttable cigar code#

It has a hologram on the far right side and a bar code on the far left. (the worldwide exporter of Cuban cigars) issued a new version of this seal in March 2010. To make it harder to copy the latter marking, Habanos S.A. Real Cuban cigars come packed in boxes that are marked with the distinctive Habanos seal in the upper right-hand corner on top of the box, and a Cuban warranty seal (the made in Cuba stamp) on the left. The key to identifying counterfeit cigars is to familiarize yourself with proper Cuban packaging. Just as you don’t expect to get a genuine Rolex or a real Louis Vuitton bag for a few bucks off a card table on a New York City street, you’re not going to find a real box of Cohiba Behikes-worth anywhere from $300 to $1,000-for $25 from a guy on the Malecón. Buying your cigars from reputable retailers-not on the beach, not in the street, not in someone’s home-is step one to getting a genuine cigar. It’s very, very rare that someone buys a box in the wrong place and they happen to be real.”īuying Cuban cigars can be tricky, but informed buyers can ensure they end up with the real deal. “Nine times out of 10, when someone comes to the store with a box, they’re counterfeit. “We get tons of people coming up-they want to sell us what they bought on the beach,” he says. Tourists coming back to Canada from Cuba commonly drop by his store to show him cigars they have bought outside of the traditional Cuban cigar stores. Marc Melanson, general manager of La Casa del Habano in Montreal, sees lots of fakes. The hustler will say he has a friend in the factory who gets the cigars or maybe he has ties to the government, but odds are you’re going to end up with something made of scrap tobacco or perhaps even floor sweepings. Will they be the products of the country’s renowned cigar factories? Almost certainly not. Will they be made of Cuban tobacco? Certainly. Any tourist walking the streets of Havana, especially one that is puffing on a cigar, may be approached by locals offering cigars for sale. Stroll the shops of any tourist area in the Caribbean and you’ll likely find fake cigars of all types. Fakes of this sort are found all over the United States. An unscrupulous vendor can buy a bundle of simple, unbranded cigars from the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua or Honduras for $20, band them with facsimiles of Cuban cigar bands, put them in a copy of a Cuban cigar box and sell them to an unsuspecting cigar smoker for $300 or more. This time 200 or more hands were raised.Ĭigars are easily faked.

After the presentation’s conclusion, we asked the question again. Perhaps 50 hands out of the 500 in the room went up. As the seminar began, we polled the audience, asking if anyone had ever purchased a fake cigar. At the last Las Vegas Big Smoke, executive editor Gordon Mott and I led a presentation on counterfeit cigars. Smoking a fake cigar just isn’t fun at all.Ĭounterfeit cigars are a bigger problem than you might think. 4 only to be disappointed when you lit up, you weren’t in a laughing mood. If you’ve put down good money for what you thought was a genuine Cohiba Esplendido, Montecristo No. What none of us recall as humorous is the experience of buying counterfeit Cuban cigars.

Their rolling skills are inept, and hilarity ensues. His plan goes awry when the rollers turn out to be counterfeit-they’re not from Cuba. Cigar-smoking fans of the classic television comedy Seinfeld might recall Kramer hatching a plan to smuggle in Cubans-as in Cuban cigar rollers, not cigars.