1969 Price List

[El Presidente]

33 minutes ago, Bijan said:

I see it as I see pre war blues records. There's a period form 1928 (or maybe 1927) to 1934 where there was a large output of blues music from Southern black musicians either recorded on location or in the north.

 

Yes.....definitely Schrodinger's cat syndrome 

[ATGroom]

6 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

All I know is that there are hundreds of oddball post-Rev cigars and only 10 have shown up.

That's the biggest problem with your theory: this statement is just factually untrue.

Ten minutes searching for cigars in this catalogue on Mitchell's site returns:

H.Upman Coronas Chicas sold April 2021
H.Upmann Gloras (dated pre-embargo) sold 2013
H.Upmann Pepitas (undated, as singles, name on bands) sold April 2021
Hoyo Coronas Chicas (two boxes dated 60s sold 2016)
Punch Gustavos sold 2016
Partagas Londres boxes dated 1960s sold 2016 and October 2021
Romeo Coronas Chicas, 1 undated sold 2020, 1 dated 1968 sold 2014

Last time we litigated it, myself and others produced photos, auctions, active sales etc for these without a great deal of effort:

RyJ Condes 
Hoyo Conquistadores
Por Larranaga Cinco Vegas (1968):
Hoyo Petit Cetros
Por Lorranaga Coronas Inmensos from the 70s
Por Larranaga Transparentes 1968
Los statos pensamientos 1960s
PL Dunhill Seleccion Suprema No. 33
RyJ Dunhill Seleccion No. 127 
HU Dunhill Seleccion Suprema No. 50
Bolivar Dunhill Seleccion Suprema No. 134 
Hoyo de Monterrey Chateaux Beaugency
La Corona Policromia (four different cigars)
Punch Elmerosos
RA Allones Grandes
Punch Nectares 1, 3 and 6
RyJ geraldes/giraldes no. 4
Partagas Selection Rara No.4
H. Upmann Mirables
La Corona Naturals
La Corona Visible Inmensos 1978 
Partagas Visible Inmensos
San Luis Rey (whole brand)
La Corona Regios dated 1962
La Corona Coronas
two instances of Dunhill Flor de Cuba Seleccion Suprema
Romeo y Julieta Coronas Chicas dated 1968
Maria Guerrero Cedros de Luxe No.2
Cifuentes Super Estupendos, which is one of the cigars MRN speculates was paper only 
Belinda Royal Coronations dated 1978
Romeo y Julieta Gran Slam ("As Chosen by Harry Waugh for Jacksons of Piccadilly" on the box)
Punch Dunhill Seleccion Suprema No. 135
H.Upmann Dunhill Seleccion Suprema No.15
H.Upmann Dunhill Seleccion Suprema No.23
H.Upmann Dunhill Seleccion Suprema No.30
H.Upmann Dunhill Seleccion Suprema No.50
Bolivar Dunhill Seleccion Suprema no.134 (three instances)
Bolivar Supremas Chuchills (box dated early 80s and British distributor repack pack dated 70s)
H.Upmann De Luxe Perfectos box dated 1960s
H.Upmann Panetelas box dated early-1980s
Hoyo de Monterrey Belvederes box dated early-1980s

I am very confident that any serious search of MO's auction history would return at least 200 "unknown" cigars, likely more.

And this is mainly from a single auction site located in the UK that has 8 years of history.

Just now I looked at the first Christies cigar auction catalogue (October 2008) I could find on Google, as they were doing cigar auctions long before Mitch. Among about 80 boxes of cigars sold were:

Romeo y Julieta Caza Reales 1978 (from JJ Fox)
H.Upmann Seymour de Luxe No.4 1963
H.Upmann Robert Lewis Vintage Selection No.4 (early 1980s)
Saint Louis Rey Exquisitos 1998 (!) 

(None of these appear in any records I have)

 

99% of cigar smokers die with half a box remaining, which gets thrown out by their widow or pinched by their brother in law.

Of the 1% that die with an overflowing walkin or locker at the club, the vast majority of these would be sold in private sales by stores or by a non-specialist estate auctioneer.

All industry people I have every spoken to about it agree that before 1980, Havana basically functioned on an "order what you want and we'll make it" basis, so many, many cigars were produced and sold only in specific regions and stores etc. I don't know what the best Swiss or Spanish cigar auction site is, but I'm sure a lot of oddball stuff would turn up there as almost all the knowledge we have is very UK / Hong Kong specific.

The data we have on what is "out there" is tiny, and still there are all these cigars that show up. They can't all be fake.

And even if we do dismiss them all as misdated pre-Rev or fakes, I don't think "stores all over the world for decades produced catalogues for cigars that never existed" is the most reasonable answer to the missing cigars.

 

On 12/5/2021 at 7:49 PM, Bijan said:

Actually I think we can independenly arrrive at 1969+ based on the Monte Especial!

One more wrinkle: it has Hoyo du Gourmet, which is normally thought to be released in 1974.

[99call]

7 hours ago, El Presidente said:

Yes.....definitely Schrodinger's cat syndrome 

I have a feeling this is going to be your counter to lots of stuff in the immediate future:

Di- "Why is there an empty bottle of rum in the washing machine,  and kebab sauce all over the bathroom towels?"

Rob-  " It wasn't me love............it this bloody cat......Ssssssschro.....schro.........its just...........listen I cant explain it now, but I'm both pissed and not pissed...if you stop observing me....then I'm pretty sure that I'm not pissed!'

[NSXCIGAR]

19 hours ago, ATGroom said:

That's the biggest problem with your theory: this statement is just factually untrue.

Ten minutes searching for cigars in this catalogue on Mitchell's site returns:

When we discussed these I pointed out that almost all of these appear to be pre-Rev or the dating appears to be questionable except for several in the first group you isolate which I do concede have surfaced, although that list needs to be cleaned up. Cigars like the La Corona Policromia explicitly state "pre-embargo" in the listing and anything that is estimated to be "1960s" would have to be off the table. I'll look at them and get a final number as far as actual post-Rev cigars that have surfaced to date.

A cigar like the HU Seymour de Luxe is dated 1963. I would have to seriously question that date assessment. It would be impossible to tell a 1962 box from a 1963 box so firsthand knowledge would be the only way, and how reliable is that? 62-63 dating gets pretty dicey. Some pre-62 items may have been still leaving the island in late 62-early 63. Perhaps some pre-Rev made items could have been stamped with the post-Rev stamp. It's far, far more likely a box like that would be pre-Rev or early 1962. No photos, and that box sold in 2000. There's also a listing for a Punch Seymour de Luxe that explicitly states pre-Embargo. Simply labeling these cigars as post-Rev is not as easy as it appears. Short of photographic evidence or a credible firsthand account (which MO is not) the dates of these items simply cannot be established. And there are many more in your list like these that can be questioned--and I will go through them. Single sticks must be omitted from consideration. We've gone through this. They are simply impossible to date, let alone ripe for fakery (see the Cifuentes Super Estupendos).

So instead of 10 we may be looking at closer to 20 and many of those are private commissions that wouldn't appear in catalogs like the Hoyo Chateau Beaugency or the RyJ Gran Slam. 20---out of the hundreds of oddball cigars in post-Rev catalogs. Less than 1%.

I wouldn't doubt the pre-1980 policy of "order what you want" but it seems that the "we'll make it" part is less apparent. How efficient do you think 1960s and 1970s Cuba was in actually fulfilling these orders? And while that may have been their policy, I'm sure they wouldn't make a single box or two--a large order would almost certainly have needed to be placed. How many orders like that would there realistically have been? There still would be factory records and recollections that MRN and Rius would have come across. Yes, it appears a few slipped through like the RyJ Gran Slam and the Hoyo Beaugency but examples that have surfaced appear to number in the single digits. 

 

[mprach024]

43 minutes ago, NSXCIGAR said:

How efficient do you think 1960s and 1970s Cuba was in actually fulfilling these orders?

Lol right.   About as bad as right now I’d wager.

[El Presidente]

36 minutes ago, NSXCIGAR said:

How efficient do you think 1960s and 1970s Cuba was in actually fulfilling these orders? And while that may have been their policy, I'm sure they wouldn't make a single box or two--a large order would almost certainly have needed to be placed. How many orders like that would there realistically have been? There still would be factory records and recollections that MRN and Rius would have come across. Yes, it appears a few slipped through like the RyJ Gran Slam and the Hoyo Beaugency but examples that have surfaced appear to number in the single digits. 

 

You would be surprised .

Andy may have a chance to jump in here.  The Fox group were highly involved with Cuban factories in the 60's/70's for the production of their own line of cigars. The system (as told to me) was remarkably efficient and the end result excellent. 

[NSXCIGAR]

2 hours ago, El Presidente said:

You would be surprised .

Andy may have a chance to jump in here.  The Fox group were highly involved with Cuban factories in the 60's/70's for the production of their own line of cigars. The system (as told to me) was remarkably efficient and the end result excellent. 

Yes, but Fox was a major player and volume was relatively high. Fox may be the exception and not the rule. As such, many of the Fox cigars are noted in MRN and there are plenty of surviving examples of Fox lines; even the models missed by MRN have surfaced. 

[El Presidente]

Just now, NSXCIGAR said:

Yes, but Fox was a major player and volume was relatively high. Fox may be the exception and not the rule. As such, there are plenty of examples of Fox lines and even the models missed by MRN have surfaced. 

Perhaps 

However I think you will find most significant London and Swiss cigar merchants from that time were quite comfortably getting their "house brands" through Cuban factories. 

It certainly improved both house prestige ....and margins 

Again, Andy might be able to chime in once he get's his feet under the desk. 

[NSXCIGAR]

2 hours ago, El Presidente said:

Perhaps 

However I think you will find most significant London and Swiss cigar merchants from that time were quite comfortably getting their "house brands" through Cuban factories. 

It certainly improved both house prestige ....and margins 

Again, Andy might be able to chime in once he get's his feet under the desk. 

No doubt Dunhill and Davidoff had little to worry about. I would include Fox in that category. That would be the big 3. Lots of volume and valuable relationships there. 

If you weren't one of them, however, you might have been blown off, quite frankly. Judging from the very small number of post-Rev private commissions that survive it doesn't seem likely that many were produced with a few high-volume production runs being the exception. 

Your observation that most if not all of these private commissions wouldn't appear in catalogs is correct I believe. But Alex isn't even including unlisted private commissions. Alex is translating ubiquity in catalogs to likelihood of production. In reality, 1% or less of these "oddballs" that aren't in MRN have been confirmed to exist. I'm sorry, but 1% seems to me to be much more of an exception than a rule. 

The fact is that there is no evidence that anything but a very, very tiny fraction of all of these oddballs ever existed in the flesh and could be a small enough number to be considered oversights on MRN's part. In fact, it looks like he just whiffed completely on the Fox Punch Nectares 1,3 and 6, the Don Candido 507 and the RA Allones Grandes. All of those should have been in MRN (and may in fact be in his new edition) but I'll count those towards the 20 or so oddballs. 

[NSXCIGAR]

19 hours ago, ATGroom said:

One more wrinkle: it has Hoyo du Gourmet, which is normally thought to be released in 1974.

It seems all of the Le Hoyos, including the Gourmet, are listed in CCW (and presumably MRN) as having been available in cajons of 100 pre-Rev (except the du Maire which was available in 50 can until 2006). It seems the Gourmet is the only Le Hoyo that vanished temporarily. 

MRN's date of 1974 is quite specific. I'm not near the book at the moment. If that's from Rius then most likely the catalog listing is an unavailable cigar (as I suspect many on this list are).

[Bijan]

8 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

It seems all of the Le Hoyos, including the Gourmet, are listed in CCW (and presumably MRN) as having been available in cajons of 100 pre-Rev (except the du Maire which was available in 50 can until 2006). It seems the Gourmet is the only Le Hoyo that vanished temporarily. 

MRN's date of 1974 is quite specific. I'm not near the book at the moment. If that's from Rius then most likely the catalog listing is an unavailable cigar (as I suspect many on this list are).

I checked my book no reference to 1974 for the du Gourmet (or any other year). Only Le Hoyo cigar with a date post 1960 is the du Dauphin which is clearly 1969 as a laguito no. 2.

 

On 12/7/2021 at 6:14 PM, ATGroom said:

One more wrinkle: it has Hoyo du Gourmet, which is normally thought to be released in 1974.

Might this be a mistake in CCW data. No other cigars were released that year besides the introduction of the original Quai d'Orsay line, which included another slim panetela, coincidence maybe? And my copy of MRN makes no reference to 1974 for the du Gourmet.

[El Presidente]

Given the number of assumptions the best course of action would be to "agree to disagree at this point in time"

it is important to try and avoid the KBG syndrome.

 

where is the meme generator when I need one!

 

 

[El Presidente]

Found it. 

 

KBG Syndrome 

 

 

 

 

[mprach024]

1 minute ago, El Presidente said:

Found it. 

 

KBG Syndrome 

 

 

 

 

Ohhhhh man….😂😂😂😂😂

[mprach024]

This picture needs to be a meme contest Rob