What has been your experience with trades/partial box purchases

[El Presidente]

 

This is obviously a follow up question to the email in relation to cigars with disappointing flavour profile. 

It piqued my interest as to what peoples experience has been with trades/purchase of partial boxes in a C2C setting 

[Bijan]

Trades and singles purchases from individuals have always been good, but usually with well known trading partners.

Edit: it's easier for me psychologically to buy the last 6 cigars in a box than a box with 21 or 22 left though.

[garbandz]

I feel I have been lucky with splits.

Usually I do the buying, and I have bought in with another person a couple of times.

Cannot recall a really dismal split, and have had a few really good ones.

I agree with @Bijan , very hard to buy 20 -odd sticks from a box, but a 5er -10er is easy. 

 

[Edicion]

I don't really see a huge difference with splitting a new box with 3-4 mates and sharing the content and this, buying a box from someone to split with, except that this guy changed his mind or didn't like the cigars or had already maxed out his credit card so needs to back out of the deal. 

[coug28]

If I’m buying a partial box/10 pack etc from someone secondhand, I always at least ask if I can see pics of the cigars. If they’re willing and they have a reputable trader/seller rep, no hesitation…the cigars may just not have been their cup of tea, or they didn’t wait long enough for them (too young/rough edges etc), or any other number of potential variables. 
 

If I don’t get to see them, eh, chances are slim I’m buying them these days (10 years ago me likely wouldn’t have an issue) …. unless they were a very familiar board acquaintance and I trusted them at their word. Few and far between in this category though. Savages, the lot of ya!  - kidding only, of course  
 

I’ll add to this though, what someone mentioned in the other thread this poll originated from….if I hesitated on partial box purchases and/or trades for fear of getting sub par stock, I’d have missed out on some truly amazing cigar experiences. 80-90%+ positive experiences only in my 10+ years of trading. Easily. 

[LLC]

1 hour ago, Bijan said:

Trades and singles purchases from individuals have always been good, but usually with well known trading partners.

Edit: it's easier for me psychologically to buy the last 6 cigars in a box than a box with 21 or 22 left though.

Agree with all these points. 

[Bagman]

Some people are committing based on box splits, and I don't think that this is what this post is meant to be about.  And agree with Bijan of buying the last 5 of a box.  I think it has to do more with buying a box of 21-23. 

There is a huge difference between splitting a box, buying some of the last, and buying a box of cigars where the seller could have said "That's it, 3 duds, I'm selling the rest of the awful box"

Trust me, it occurred to me to sell a partial box of 2018 plugged RyJ churchills.  5 straight plugs.  I felt karma would get me, so I didn't.  In the end, the box was almost all plugs.

[El Presidente]

Just now, Monterey said:

Trust me, it occurred to me to sell a partial box of 2018 plugged RyJ churchills.  5 straight plugs.  I felt karma would get me, so I didn't.  In the end, the box was almost all plugs.

Mind you, if you did your reputation would be trashed.  You wouldn't do it. Decent people don't do it. Buy the seller. 

The right reason to sell a partial box?

• fallen out of love
• need to raise funds
• the prices are just so stupid high right now
• I want to try something different
• I never liked Behike anyway 

 

[bishop532]

I’ve had pretty good experiences buying partial boxes / samplers in C2C setting. It let me try a lot of different brands and vitolas that I wouldn’t have likely been able to if I was buying a box of everything I tried. 

That said, I had a couple bad deals too. I used to buy regularly from a guy on another forum when I first started smoking Cubans ~ 5 years ago, and they were generally good deals and solid sticks (if not quite FOH-level quality). After like six good months he sent me 4 or 5 fivers where 75% of the sticks were plugged, and badly. I asked him what was going on and he played dumb so I stopped buying from him. I didn’t give him bad feedback at the time, but looking back I probably should’ve done so because it’s pretty obvious he started using me to get rid of anything with poor construction. 

For the most part though, I’ve been able to get great deals on aged cigars and a nice variety to help me figure out what I like best (panetelas, Coronas, and lanceros mostly). I’d agree that as long as you’re careful about who you trade with/buy from, you’ll come out happy more often than sad. My number one rule is stay off Facebook.

[PigFish]

The real merit of cigars is that they are all individual.

The trade-off with cigars is that they are rarely all stellar, and rarely all duds! 

 

Extrapolating from that last thread… A GOOD retailer would cull all the duds out for me…! Ahhhem, not mentioning any names mind you!

-the Pig

[La_Tigre]

6 hours ago, El Presidente said:

Mind you, if you did your reputation would be trashed.  You wouldn't do it. Decent people don't do it. Buy the seller. 

The right reason to sell a partial box?

• fallen out of love
• need to raise funds
• the prices are just so stupid high right now
• I want to try something different
• I never liked Behike anyway 

 

The #1 reason we are hesitant to sell anything and lately trade anything. We have a boatload of unopened variety and love the idea of swapping to broaden the collection. But the world always seems to see the nefarious when things don’t smoke amazing every time. And CC quality control…did we all forget something??? 🤔 

[bishop532]

4 hours ago, La_Tigre said:

The #1 reason we are hesitant to sell anything and lately trade anything. We have a boatload of unopened variety and love the idea of swapping to broaden the collection. But the world always seems to see the nefarious when things don’t smoke amazing every time. And CC quality control…did we all forget something??? 🤔 

I think the point is that people shouldn’t trade or sell cigars that are obviously (to the eye or touch) bad sticks. Cuba has poor QA, but often you can tell when a cigar is going to smoke poorly (or not at all without help).

For example, sometimes I look at a cigar and it’s beautifully rolled, feels great, smells great, but then it smokes like crap. On the other hand, sometimes you get a cigar where they clearly shoved 3x as much tobacco into the wrapper as they should’ve, and its going to be soaking wet for the next 15 years even if you dry box it the entire time. I don’t think most people assume evil intent when they get a handful of the former, but the latter might be another story (especially if the same person keeps trading / selling cigars like that). 
 

EDIT: That said, some people will always assume the worst and throw a fit when they don’t get exactly what they want. (Hint: Most of them come from the same country as me). But I like to think most people are fairly reasonable. 

[Shrimpchips]

I’ve had great experiences trading or getting partial boxes from others. Even in instances where they just weren’t good to other people, as long as they were transparent that they just don’t like them, but otherwise there’s no issues with them, I’ve been completely fine with the trade. Sometimes I’ve disagreed and loved the sticks, and other times, well I guess our palates agreed.  So long as people aren’t knowingly passing bad sticks, it works for me. Just as there’s plenty of good folks out there, there’s always a percentage of wankers too - hazards of a hobby I suppose.