Would you rather buy young and age yourself, or pay the premium for 10+ years box age?

[El Presidente]

Cuban Cigars. Would you rather buy young and age yourself, or pay the premium for 10+ years box age?

Let's take a Partagas Serie D 4 for example. 

Say you could pick up a box for $590 USD today. 2024 box. 

Yet, you can also purchase a 2014 box for $995 USD 

Assume quality, construction,and quality of source are similar 

Take us through your thought process 

[Li Bai]

Pretty simple for me, I'd rather buy them young and age them myself, it's the only way to witness the process of maturation myself.

Let's say I pay an extra for a 10 or 15yo box, how would I know I wouldn't have enjoyed the fresh ones better for half the price 🤔??

Right now I don't have to think it twice but I have some boxes that are reaching the 8-9 year mark and I might have a different take on the matter in a few years time 👍

[LaoFan]

Bit of both.

I prefer to age my own young sticks at my preferred temp/environment, but patience is a virtue, and often I don't have enough of it. I recently bought a third humidor that I stack with young reg. production and swear to myself I won't touch it. So far so good.

Here and there when there's a good deal on something aged (underpriced aged stock happens way more frequently than one would think), I'll snag it.

[loose_axle]

I love buying and aging myself. Just fascinating to check on the boxes and the change in appearance and smell. I have some boxes from 2019 that the air tight container they are in has mostly been straw and manure smell but the start of this year has transitioned into straight dark chocolate aromas every time I open that container. Yellowing paper, nice oiled wrappers, they are going so well I'm going to leave them to get to 10 years or so before touching. 

[Mike Mecklenburg]

Buy and age myself. To buy aged, you have to trust that the seller procured the cigar the entire time.  

[Ruggerpgh99]

I would much rather buy them young and age them myself. Challenges in acquiring them now in my current location make that a much bigger issue. I am very interested in seeing the maturation process, being newer to the CC game. 

[Chibearsv]

I’d highly prefer buying them young and carrying a large inventory to age and smoke at the same time. Due to pricing and availability, that’s not realistic for me anymore. So, after my inventory is depleted, I could see myself paying up for a box of aged cigars here and there when I need a taste. 

[JPark3]

Definitely buy young and age myself. I can experience the journey over time and I'm in control. I'd much rather be able to say "that's on me" if something goes wrong with something like storage.

That said, I would splurge on the occasional aged box depending on what it is (f it's discontinued, something I'm familiar with, etc.)

[yuppie]

I would prefer that everyone's storage conditions are similar or better than my own, which there is just no way to prove. I've bought a bunch of aged stuff and learned the hard way that some people just don't care enough or don't think that proper storage is that big of a deal. I haven't had the patience myself to wait 10 years because I barely started smoking 3 years ago!

I'd pay the premium if I was sure it was coming from a lifetime of climate controlled conditions. Like Rafael Gonzalez PEs and Perlas are really good after 10 years and brand new they just suck! There are plenty of brands that are smoking really well young too and it is fun to hop around the years and see these differences. Lately I'm leaning toward buying fresh and making sure my storage is on point. Going forward I'm going to be more careful about what I buy with age already on it.

Your question has me wondering if you're cooking up another project 😆

[BG318]

My collection is at a point where I have a good mix of aged as well as newer cigars. I would pay a premium for rarer or discontinued boxes as they come up, but would vastly prefer to buy and age the new ones. The wrinkle with that idea is the current state of availability, so I am likely to gobble up anything that comes my way.

[joeypots]

Buy young and hold. Refreshing a collection is entirely different that building a collection.

[BrightonCorgi]

I would not pay that much additionally for an older box. I enjoy the cigars at different phases. 

If the 10 year old box was only $50-75 more then I probably would pay the difference.

[Namisgr11]

It makes sense that cigar enthusiasts young enough to enjoy the fruits of their labor of holding and self-aging cigars would prefer to do it.  But for those of us in our seventies, it's less favorable of a numbers game to hope to get 10 or more years of aging on our purchases. I have paid extra on a few occasions to buy cigars with 5 or more years on them, and have really enjoyed the few I've smoked so far. But my oldest cigars were rolled in 2017, so even then putting a few more years on them and going through them slowly adds to the experience.

[HailState]

Would prefer to buy young and age myself. I’m in my mid-thirties so should have plenty of time for the cigars to round into form. Only time I may potentially seek out already aged stock would be if I came across a hard to find box of a cigars on BR I’ve yet to try and it already had age. 

[Havanaaddict]

There was a time before "CIGARFLATION" I bought a lot of aged and vintage boxes. But the way prices are now, it cost enough for a box I don't need to pay double for aged!  

[BrightonCorgi]

1 hour ago, Havanaaddict said:

There was a time before "CIGARFLATION" I bought a lot of aged and vintage boxes. But the way prices are now, it cost enough for a box I don't need to pay double for aged!  

Aged cigars were never more expensive 15-20 years ago. Same price as the current release.

[JohnS]

I definitely prefer to buy young and age my own. After all, one has to keep in mind that buying aged stock was once probably just regular production and run-of-the-mill, subject to the usual construction and performance issues in a box of 25 (or more or less). If I age my own, there's no great loss if I smoke a cigar from that box that is ordinary, but if I get one that "shines", so-to-speak, that's where the true value of aging the box comes into things. It's a great feeling.

[NYGuido]

I went through this debate this summer when building out my Cuban collection and took a mixed approach. Most are new boxes, but I did purchase some with age for the purpose of short cutting myself into things that are a bit more ready to smoke while the others develop. Going forward, I’m likely to buy current production and hold them. 

[TheCigarSoldier]

In my opinion, buying young and aging yourself is how you cut your teeth in this game. You learn what age is your sweet spot for the daily drivers, and you set aside some fun limited stuff for a decade and dust off the box once they've fallen off the face of the earth. I've built a steady collection over 15 years by doing this.

I'm not as concerned with not knowing how well the cigars were kept for those 10 years. Odds are if I'm buying from a credible source, they've probably got a more pristine operation for this than I do. Otherwise, I wouldn't consider buying it in the first place.

What I more focus on is the opportunity cost. Why pay someone else nearly double the price to age the damn thing when i could have 2 boxes fresh and put in the time myself. In this scenario, I'd buy a box of 25 to age for $590, and a box of 10 to smoke. When that box of 10 was done, I would know whether I wanted to go deep on this line or just enjoy the box of 25 that I had already purchased.

After the box of 10 was through, I'd buy another box or 2, one to age one to smoke. I would always let the original box of 25 sit the longest, only exception to that was if a newer box had much prettier/more uniform wrappers. By the time I got around to cracking the original box, I had another one in the queue to age about a year behind the original. 

Mix this pseudo-strategy in those in with the new world collection so you don't burn through the aging stock too quickly, and in a few years you've built a steady rotation where you have plenty to choose from with 3-4 years age on the box, and only have to smoke fresh for curiosities sake. 

[ha_banos]

I bought a lot of singles/fives/tens of all sorts of things much of it aged for some time. And quite a few single boxes. Over the years. Some boxes ageing away. The singles mostly gone. Also bought a few aged boxes. 

But in hindsight...I'd have bought more space! And stocked up on regular production multiple boxes over years. Less of this buying aged stuff. These days auction prices being so nuts, people could be buying some of my aged boxes! 

[El Hoze]

Aging your own cigars is definitely a huge part of the fun. And with what a mess Cuba is, I unfortunately don’t see prices going down (same thing I would have said 10 years ago) so it makes financial sense. Just knowing they’ve been sitting undisturbed in the right conditions, checking in on them, etc. adds to the pleasure. Any time I hear about whatever old box being pulled out of the “keep” at JJ Fox, etc. where it’s been sitting for however many years my mouth waters like oh man. Super cool. 

When I was just falling down the rabbit hole I bought a bunch of aged stuff, I was anxious to figure out that part of it. Glad I did, I still have some of them! And today with Bond Roberts auctions, if you have the coin I say go for it. 

[yuppie]

The only thing that hasn't really been addressed yet: Discontinued vitolas.

SLR Petit Coronas, Le Hoyo du Gourmet, Rafael Gonzalez Slenderellas. These are just a few examples of oddly shaped cigars that probably pack a punch that you'll just never see again and what a shame. Basically, if you want to smoke stuff like this, you've got to pony up and pray they weren't neglected during that stretch.

[Tunkat92]

For most Cubans, my preference is to buy fresh and age. A majority of Cubans I smoked since ‘22 have been excellent within 12 months of the box code. My favorite part of smoking Cubans is smoking through a box over the years, seeing how they age, experiencing great runs, and just aging by accident.

[KCCubano]

7 hours ago, yuppie said:

The only thing that hasn't really been addressed yet: Discontinued vitolas.

SLR Petit Coronas, Le Hoyo du Gourmet, Rafael Gonzalez Slenderellas. These are just a few examples of oddly shaped cigars that probably pack a punch that you'll just never see again and what a shame. Basically, if you want to smoke stuff like this, you've got to pony up and pray they weren't neglected during that stretch.

Neglect is just part of it. You can't polish a turd that was never good to begin with. Could have been rolled with a bad batch of tobacco or just not blended correctly. 

[WestCoastSmokin]

I just looked at my inventory list and I’ve picked up 3 boxes with age. Everything else I’ve bought young and have been aging myself. That’s part of the fun and it’s why I’m so intrigued with CC. The members here also make a great point with buying aged CC and taking a risk on how they were cared for. It makes more sense to buy young and age yourself (also almost always now, you can buy two young boxes vs one aged box) than to buy aged and risk how they were taken care of before being in your possession.