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Can I just give kudos to this gentleman whom I do not know personally.  He obviously has the resources and connections to take this to the nth degree. More importantly, he is prepared to share th

Very interesting video, must see for all you high end smokers.       

Bingo.  This is not a box of Monte Petit Edmundo. 

Posted

That’s nuts. Still glad I have never chased the LE RE or special editions.  With prices where they are, it seems like everything is fair game for fakes now. 

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Posted

personally I wouldn't ask for a replacement from a 'legitimate' shop that sold fakes. I would just ask for my money back and call it a victory. more importantly, fakes are becoming so good and most of us don't have the privilege to travel to check the authenticity of the purchase, also its inconvenient. Habanos needs to ditch their broken site and implement a new  user friendly tool to check their cigars.

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Posted
14 minutes ago, Arabian said:

personally I wouldn't ask for a replacement from a 'legitimate' shop that sold fakes. I would just ask for my money back and call it a victory. more importantly, fakes are becoming so good and most of us don't have the privilege to travel to check the authenticity of the purchase, also its inconvenient. Habanos needs to ditch their broken site and implement a new  user friendly tool to check their cigars.

Fakes are a part of the business in a way.  I don't think there is anything Habanos can do to prevent it.  Same for just about any luxury good short of a car, boat, airplane, etc...  Even then when those are antiques; even the best have been duped.

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Posted
11 hours ago, BrightonCorgi said:

I don't think there is anything Habanos can do to prevent it.

NFT technology should be able to protect the box but not the cigars of course. I guess you could NFT the bands also. Clearly on releases of this caliber it's warranted.

I don't know enough about NFT to know whether it could be duplicated or counterfeited. 

I fear that the new NFT Siglo de Oro box is ripe to be refilled. There are 8,888 of them so quite a few.

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Posted

One day someone has to explain the concept of "Gray Market" to me. I for one am not interested in giving money to anyone who's legitimacy could be questioned.

CAH

Posted
1 hour ago, Chas.Alpha said:

One day someone has to explain the concept of "Gray Market" to me. I for one am not interested in giving money to anyone who's legitimacy could be questioned.

CAH

Easy enough.  Cigars not bought from an official distributor. 

In theory, they buy from someone who bought from an official distributor.  An easy way to think of it is BondRoberts.   Pretty much all Gray Market as we, the sellers, didn't buy from an official distributor, but bought form someone who did buy from an official distributor.

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Posted
1 minute ago, Monterey said:

Cool. Why scratch the bar codes? By definition, any online retailer is selling out-of-market share?

Posted

Sorry. Off-topic. This was meant for the “Favorite Cigar Art” thread…🤣🤣🤣

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Posted
41 minutes ago, Chas.Alpha said:
46 minutes ago, Monterey said:

Cool. Why scratch the bar codes? By definition, any online retailer is selling out-of-market share?

Because some vendors fear getting yelled at by HSA for sending cigars to be sold elsewhere.  So they scratch them off before selling them to a gray market seller.

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Posted
4 minutes ago, Monterey said:

Because some vendors fear getting yelled at by HSA for sending cigars to be sold elsewhere.  So they scratch them off before selling them to a gray market seller.

Ok, trust me. This isn’t just me being thick because I enjoy it…

Let’s use PCC for this exercise: PCC supplies my shop with 100 various boxes. My clients don’t like anything over 46 gauge. I have 200 boxes of Monte 2 hanging around. How do they end up at a Swiss online vendor?

Posted
1 hour ago, Chas.Alpha said:

None better than this, I hope

I know those are fake because a 2022 ER would never be available in 2023! :spotlight:

 

3 hours ago, Chas.Alpha said:

One day someone has to explain the concept of "Gray Market" to me. I for one am not interested in giving money to anyone who's legitimacy could be questioned.

A little more explanation is that distributors have stock they need to liquidate. This usually occurs because HSA forces distributors to take things they don't necessarily want. For example if they want a case of CoRo they have to take a case of RyJ Coronitas en Cedro. That's a bit of an exaggeration as the distributor can be forced to take many cigars that their vendors don't want like SPNP, SC La Fuerza, Mag 54 etc. These cigars get liquidated wholesale to the gray market at a discount allowing the gray market vendors to sell at low prices. 

The only drawback is that HSA frowns upon distributors moving product outside their region. A serial number allows HSA to track back that box to the distributor. That's why the selling distributor will often remove the serials before wholesaling them out. 

54 minutes ago, Chas.Alpha said:

Let’s use PCC for this exercise: PCC supplies my shop with 100 various boxes. My clients don’t like anything over 46 gauge. I have 200 boxes of Monte 2 hanging around. How do they end up at a Swiss online vendor?

These cigars don't get to to vendors. Vendors wouldn't be ordering cigars from their distributor their customers don't want. Consequently the issue that PCC has is that they end up with cigars their clients (vendors) don't order. The distributors want to move them in bulk. They can go to other distributors or anyone who has the cash, e.g. gray market vendors. Most of the vendors operating in Switzerland and Hong Kong are not gray market vendors. They're supplied directly by the distributors. However many gray market vendors are based in these countries because of low duties and ease of shipping. You can usually tell the difference by pricing. Vendors who are supplied directly usually have higher prices but more desirable stock. 

Today there is so little surplus stock at the distributors that the gray market is pretty much dead. 

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Posted
12 minutes ago, Chas.Alpha said:

Let’s use PCC for this exercise: PCC supplies my shop with 100 various boxes. My clients don’t like anything over 46 gauge. I have 200 boxes of Monte 2 hanging around. How do they end up at a Swiss online vendor?

Any retailer within the licensed region can largely do whatever they like with the boxes that they receive. The distributors responsibility is to sell within their region. After that, they can largely wipe their hands. 

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Posted
3 hours ago, Chas.Alpha said:

One day someone has to explain the concept of "Gray Market" to me. I for one am not interested in giving money to anyone who's legitimacy could be questioned.

CAH

Just to be more specific, some countries used to have lower prices for cigars, than other countries, but weren't allowed to sell on the internet. So if some product  didn't move in brick and mortar shops in that country they'd sell the boxes to (grey market) vendors in another country that could sell on the internet.

As others have said there's a a dozen or half dozen such vendors that are reputable. And one of them (one of maybe less reputable ones did end up selling fakes recently).

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Posted
17 minutes ago, Bijan said:

As others have said there's a a dozen or half dozen such vendors that are reputable.

But as we've recently learned being directly supplied by a distributor doesn't preclude that vendor from obtaining fakes either inadvertently or intentionally from third parties. 

Posted
4 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

But as we've recently learned being directly supplied by a distributor doesn't preclude that vendor from obtaining fakes either inadvertently or intentionally from third parties. 

That vendor bought from lower down the chain than distributors (unless they had deals with many distributors). Also they generally didn't have good prices on anything but unwanted cheap cigars even before the recent cigarmagedon.

I think lack of supply of much of anything, made them careless/reckless.

 

4 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

These cigars don't get to to vendors. Vendors wouldn't be ordering cigars from their distributor their customers don't want.

I think vendors end up with such boxes too.

People used to walk in to brick and mortars and see vintage unwanted boxes gathering dust.

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Posted
7 minutes ago, Bijan said:

I think vendors end up with such boxes too.

People used to walk in to brick and mortars and see vintage unwanted boxes gathering dust.

Yes, gray market can purchase from anywhere but after a middleman profit starts to dwindle. I would imagine they'd want to deal directly with the distributors ideally and I'm sure the top gray market vendors do.

And I'm sure vendors have boxes gathering dust but the notion of having 200 unsellable boxes is pretty unrealistic. A retail vendor is pretty unlikely to order that much of something they can't sell. That's why the boxes sit at the distributor and they need to get rid of them. The distributor can only move what the vendors request. That's what I meant by they never reach the vendor. 

Posted
One day someone has to explain the concept of "Gray Market" to me.


The “gray market” exists due to two conditions of Habanos S.A.:
1. The volume of supplies to distributors of rare, popular and in-demand cigars is limited
2. The more cigars a distributor sells (including illiquid), the more liquid positions he will get next time

To sell illiquid on the “gray market”, they use duty-free zones. This allows him to maintain low prices and easily compete with the “white market”. In this way distributors earn Habanos incentives.
The most famous "grey markets" are in Hong Kong and Switzerland.
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