What's the best Airport located Duty Free Cigar shop in the world

[PapaDisco]

HKG (Hong Kong) has good, mainstream selection, as well as some stuff 4-5 years old BUT it's expensive as hell. They've also been slow to upgrade their humidification and temperature control so inspect anything you buy carefully.

Beirut eh? I suppose risking life and limb for a good cigar is worth it.

[tmac77]

Cuba....

[milo]

Seems that Tel Aviv is always running the buy three get one free "special." I also think they still have the Cohiba Reserva boxes, along with a few other older boxes.

Unfortuntely, Lebanon does not see me as fit to enter the country, so I have not traveled through Beriut. I hope one day soon that changes. Sadly, I am not even entitled to the "special treatment" that some on this forum have complained about during their recent travels in the Middle-East; I am just not allowed in--no facebook check or questions asked. Funny thing is, my father, his father and his father's father, etc. were able to freely cross in to the territory now known as Lebanon (even before it was called Lebanon). Seems ignorance is a universally principle...

Not been to many, but Zurich had a nice, albeit, small shop in the Davidoff area.

Munich had zilch last time I went through and Frankfurt wasn't much better.

Tel Aviv does have nice older sticks (and a large amount of variety). Two years ago I found a handful of Cohiba Reserva boxes. Sadly all of them were moldy and not worth taking a risk on. Even at the lower price of about $550 USD. I settled on 2 boxes of Monte Sublimes and 2 boxes of Boli Corona Extra from 2008 instead. Total was around $600 for the 4 boxes. At the time they had a deal, buy any 3 boxes and get a 4th free. Equal or lesser value of course.

Montreal and Toronto duty free are truly the worst ever. Unless you want an unlimited and highly overpriced selection of Don Candido, there is nothing there for you. Not even booze. CRAZY prices.

[Ghabanos]

Vancouver sucked. Hong Kong sux.

[DeanoUK]

Not been to Beirut, but Dubai airport is awesome. Gotta couple of trips coming up in next few months which should remove me of all my pocket money for the foreseeable future!

[shlomo]

Anybody been through Amsterdam recently? Friend going through and offered to grab me a box or two.

Specifically looking for REs. 

[hababa]

Both Santiago and a Buenos Aires suck.

[luvdunhill]

Buenos Aires suck.

The airport, or the LCDH downtown?

[hababa]

19 minutes ago, luvdunhill said:

 

The airport, or the LCDH downtown?

 

Airport, didn't go to LCDH.  But the taxes in ARG are ridiculous.  

[PapaDisco]

Hong Kong has really gotten terrible.  They used to be poorly stocked but serviceable.  Then they added humidification to their warehouse 3 years ago, which really helped; but lately the prices have just gone bananas.  Like $600USD for a current box of PSD4 (25).

[Jose_A_Rodriguez]

20 hours ago, shlomo said:

Anybody been through Amsterdam recently? Friend going through and offered to grab me a box or two.

Specifically looking for REs. 

@shlomo

Yesterday, I was at Schiphol Airport and for the most part the duty free options are nothing special. No RE or LE anywhere.

Not sure if you're interested, but I saw many boxes of Hoyo de Monterrey Hoye du Prince selling for 176 euros. 

[stogieluver]

23 hours ago, shlomo said:

Anybody been through Amsterdam recently? Friend going through and offered to grab me a box or two.

Specifically looking for REs. 

Went through there in May.  No RE's or LE's. 

[shlomo]

2 hours ago, Jose_A_Rodriguez said:

@shlomo

Yesterday, I was at Schiphol Airport and for the most part the duty free options are nothing special. No RE or LE anywhere.

Not sure if you're interested, but I saw many boxes of Hoyo de Monterrey Hoye du Prince selling for 176 euros. 

Hmm. Not a terrible price on those, but not a cigar I would jump on. Do you remember any other pricing?

[shlomo]

25 minutes ago, stogieluver said:

Went through there in May.  No RE's or LE's. 

Thanks. Do you remember any pricing?

[stogieluver]

5 hours ago, shlomo said:

Thanks. Do you remember any pricing?

Sorry, Shlomo, I don't.  I had already purchased boxes elsewhere and really wasn't looking for anything other than RE's & LE's, so I didn't pay any attention to the pricing of the regular stock.

[mnzoui]

Beirut

[busdriver]

Sounds like I need to visit Beirut and Dubai!  I have never seen a duty free that had memorable selection of cubans.

[BrightonCorgi]

A buddy picked me up the sweetest looking box of Lanceros from CDG.  Probably the best looking box of Lanceros I have ever seen and the price was solid.

[Santiago]

In my experience, duty free at Ljubljana airport (Slovenia) has a small selection of great sticks at great prices.

 

London Heathrow, Madrid, Belgrade are overpriced, though Madrid T4 has a great selection.  Better off buying outside the airport if you're in Spain though.

[Cold Smoke]

I've had good times cigar shopping at Frankfurt airport duty free.

[Guest ripper]

Not the best duty-free shop, but I had a memorable experience at Mexico City airport 24 years ago. Here is the story:

I wrote boxing for big-city dailies for 21 years – 1973-94.

In 1993, I was writing boxing for the Tacoma WA News Tribune and got sent to Mexico City to cover a big fight – 136,000 in a soccer stadium, a kid from Auburn WA named Greg Haugen, tough guy, vs. the great Julio Cesar Chavez.

The Mexican government promoted the fight in cahoots with Don King. They deserved each other. Two federales, Jorge and Oscar, were assigned to take me anywhere I wanted to go that week. They squired me all over Mexico City in a new black Mercury Grand Marquis, looking for Cuban cigars. Couldn’t find good prices. Saw plenty of junk, many fakes. Bought nada.

Haugen got iced in round 5. Was not a good fight.

The day after the fight, I’m at the Mexico City airport, headed home. There’s a duty-free shop with a wall of Cubans in boxes. Jorge, one of the federales, was still wth me. He told the shop manager that I was a special friend of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. I met President Salinas on that trip, was nothing more than a grip and grinner – a handshake.

The store manager smiled and said everything was priced at $25 U.S. to $40. A box!

Jorge nudged me. I bought a duffel bag. In a dream moment, I handed the bag to a lady working in the shop and said, “Fill it.”

Bought $850 worth of Cubans – Cohibas, Partagas, Montecristo, Punch, the works. 28 boxes.

Went through customs at LAX. What are they going to do, put me in jail? My criminal record was a speeding ticket at age 16. The dark-skinned folks got herded to a security area and had their bags searched. Us gringos were herded to another line. All they asked was where I’d been and where I was headed. I could have packed the bag with black tar heroin.

Handed out Cubans for years. Smoked last of the Montecristo No. 2 torpedos in 2016.

 

[FatPete]

Brilliant story ripper, thanks for sharing 

[kuma]

CDG / Charles de Gauulle Airport has been upgraded in some parts that I did not know about (Duty Free Areas)

When headed off for France I usually go with the queen bee in late spring because I can get

a direct flight from JFK non-stop to the Nice airport (NCE ; Aeroport de Nice Cote d'Azur) because the F1 Monaco, French Open Paris (clay),

and Cannes film fest. are going on in May (not sure the order of events, me think F1 is 1st on list).   What a dream of a airport (NCE) is to fly into,

calm, orderly, laid back just what a doctor would order for a grumpy tourist like myself.  And because of these events wala direct flight to NCE.

NCE airport has a pretty good selection of major brands (cc's) but CDG after the revamp has a very good "Duty Free section 2 I think" but if

you can wait better to hit the city of Nice for your seafood and cigars!  Experence tells me QB wants France this spring (2018) I want

Spain and if driving then both!  France has a new RE a petit corona and when there I'm going to grab a box or 2.........Spain is a wwhole different

animule.  Best to wait to where ever you are going (city / town) and pick your boxes there.  Love Spain a cigar lovers delight, I guess right in pecking

next best thing to Kuba.  Can't speak about Kuba much I have neer been.  And maybe I'll just sit this journey out until they can figure

out "what the F***" they are doing with prices across the board!

Cao mates!

[semifan1]

have been to a lot Beruit, dubai, GDA,. Beruit has a lot of nice stuff, but they do charge a lot for the older stock about what you would pay from the secondary market. Dubai would be my prefered, but you need to get there when they get stuff as it goes fast now. Beruit not so much as a lot of people are not going thru there. Being in the region it's nice cause I can take a flight to either pretty quick.