I know I have had my fill of picking stems out of cigars, some stems as big as 2 mm wide, hate to have stems in my cigars and always wondered why expensive Cuban cigars would have stems in them!
I found this vintage advertising poster to be interesting!
Manila rope, did not know that some unscrupulous cigar makers way back when (1900's) used cabbage leaves and rope as a substitute for tobacco.
Have you run across any such shenanigans?