Weekend Discussion: The Golden Rule of Pricing Fake Cubans

[El Presidente]

One of the first lessons of selling fake Cuban cigars is this:

If you're going to fake them... don't make them too cheap. 

Take this example. A "box" of Cohiba Robustos for €750.

 

BOX OF COHIBA ROBUSTOS CIGARS

 

€750.00

 

Any FOH member knows they're fake before they've even finished the first photograph. But the price is fascinating.

Why not €150?

Because €150 screams counterfeit.

Why not €1,500?

Because at that price buyers start demanding provenance, box codes, receipts and high-resolution photos.

Instead, the faker aims for the psychological sweet spot. High enough that the buyer thinks, "Nobody would fake them at this price."

Low enough that the buyer thinks, "Maybe the seller doesn't know what they have...maybe they've inherited them...maybe they're just looking for a quick sale."

Expensive enough to feel plausible. Cheap enough to tempt someone into believing they've found an opportunity.

Counterfeiters aren't selling cigars. They're selling hope. Hope that the buyer has discovered the deal of the year, hope that everyone else has missed it, hope that they're smarter than the market.

The better the fake, the less the cigars matter. The entire transaction becomes an exercise in behavioural economics.

The best counterfeiters almost always aim for that uncomfortable middle ground where your brain starts whispering, "What if..."?

So here's my question.

What are the best examples of this behavioural economics in play that you have come across? Cigars or otherwise.

[JohnS]

A good example of some recent (and relevant) behavioural economics at play, in my resident country of Australia, has been the famous case of the two large supermarket chains, Woolworths and Coles, using 'price anchoring tricks' to increase demand for products during the Covid-19 pandemic (and later). What this means is that a retailer will artificially increase the price of a product for a short time and then claim a discount on the price (after the item has had a stable price for some time), when all they've done is actually increase the price. For example, say a generic brand of chocolate confectionary costs $2, and that price is stable for 12/18/24 months, the retailer lifts the price to $2.50 for around 4 or 5 weeks (Woolworths and Coles had this down to an art, believe me) and then put the item on sale at $2.20. In effect, the price has gone up 20c.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (shortened usually to the ACCC), the government body that protects consumer rights in Australia, took Woolworths and Coles to Court over the matter, in separate cases, in September 2024. In May 2026, Coles lost their case. The Woolworths case is still pending, but they will lose too. As a consumer, I found it all to be 'poetic justice' because these two retailers dominate the Australian market and have acted as an oligopoly for a number of years now, and getting them on price collusion has not been easy, until this.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-28/coles-down-down-accc-court-battle-prices/106382746

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/court-finds-that-coles-misled-customers-over-down-down-claims

[xiangnan]

One example I see quite often in China is fake Cuban cigars being sold as so-called “factory cigars.”

There are price lists circulating for supposed El Rey del Mundo and Ramón Allones Lebanese regional editions, a Bolívar German regional edition, Bolívar Gold Medals, and even Ramón Allones Phoenicio 40th Anniversary cigars. Prices are usually around RMB 6,000–10,000 for a box of 25, roughly US$900–1,500.

The better fakes are presented very well. The boxes, bands and seals can all look convincing. The usual story is that they were genuinely made in Cuban factories, but came out through a factory worker or someone with an inside connection.

At $150 a box, almost nobody would believe it. At $1,000 or more, some buyers start thinking, “Surely nobody would put this much effort into a fake and then charge this much for it.” The price is still far below the genuine market value, so it feels like access to an unofficial source rather than a counterfeit.

The buyer starts calculating the profit before establishing that the product is genuine.

[ATGroom]

If my inbox is anything to go by, for a great many people the prospect of a good bargain is enough for the 'greed' part of the human brain to absolutely overwhelm the 'logic' section, at least for long enough to get the cigars home and wonder in the cold light of day if perhaps the $3000 dollar box of cigars you just bought for $300 from a random guy on the street might not be totally authentic.

Case in point the Cohiba 30th Aniversario cigars posted by @xiangnan. They are a 30 year old ultra-rare of which only 2,250 sticks were ever produced. It would be impossible to buy a single on the legitimate market today, but if you were to find one it would be at absolute minimum $5,000 a stick.

And yet, every dealer on Instagram can get them in bundles. Price varies depending on how big a sucker he thinks he has on the hook.

[xiangnan]

14 minutes ago, ATGroom said:

If my inbox is anything to go by, for a great many people the prospect of a good bargain is enough for the 'greed' part of the human brain to absolutely overwhelm the 'logic' section, at least for long enough to get the cigars home and wonder in the cold light of day if perhaps the $3000 dollar box of cigars you just bought for $300 from a random guy on the street might not be totally authentic.

Case in point the Cohiba 30th Aniversario cigars posted by @xiangnan. They are a 30 year old ultra-rare of which only 2,250 sticks were ever produced. It would be impossible to buy a single on the legitimate market today, but if you were to find one it would be at absolute minimum $5,000 a stick.

And yet, every dealer on Instagram can get them in bundles. Price varies depending on how big a sucker he thinks he has on the hook.

Exactly. The availability alone should be enough to give the game away. Something virtually impossible to find legitimately somehow becomes readily available in bundles. Yet people still focus on how much they might be saving rather than asking how the seller has so many of them.Price varies depending on how big a sucker he thinks he has on the hook😂

[Fuzz AI]

1 hour ago, JohnS said:

A good example of some recent (and relevant) behavioural economics at play, in my resident country of Australia, has been the famous case of the two large supermarket chains, Woolworths and Coles, using 'price anchoring tricks' to increase demand for products during the Covid-19 pandemic (and later). What this means is that a retailer will artificially increase the price of a product for a short time and then claim a discount on the price (after the item has had a stable price for some time), when all they've done is actually increase the price. For example, say a generic brand of chocolate confectionary costs $2, and that price is stable for 12/18/24 months, the retailer lifts the price to $2.50 for around 4 or 5 weeks (Woolworths and Coles had this down to an art, believe me) and then put the item on sale at $2.20. In effect, the price has gone up 20c.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (shortened usually to the ACCC), the government body that protects consumer rights in Australia, took Woolworths and Coles to Court over the matter, in separate cases, in September 2024. In May 2026, Coles lost their case. The Woolworths case is still pending, but they will lose too. As a consumer, I found it all to be 'poetic justice' because these two retailers dominate the Australian market and have acted as an oligopoly for a number of years now, and getting them on price collusion has not been easy, until this.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-28/coles-down-down-accc-court-battle-prices/106382746

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/court-finds-that-coles-misled-customers-over-down-down-claims

Harvey Norman did that all the time decades ago. Prices rises just before upcoming sales was quite normal for Gerry to implement. And let's not for get the furniture stores that have a summer sale... then a spring sale, followed by the mid year sale... you can't forget the autumn sale, and god forbid if there isn't a Christmas sale. 

It's not so much as price collusion. I used to sit in on those meetings where we'd look at the catalogues for the other major supermarket (not gonna say who I used to work for, but some of you know) and make price discounts just below theirs for the next day. They would do the same. Eventually you come to a point where it is no longer viable to go lower, mainly as the vendor won't give any more discount, and you can't go below a certain percentage. We would even ask staff to bring in their local supermarket catalogues so we could see how individual regions were pricing their goods.

[Li Bai]

22 hours ago, ATGroom said:

If my inbox is anything to go by, for a great many people the prospect of a good bargain is enough for the 'greed' part of the human brain to absolutely overwhelm the 'logic' section, at least for long enough to get the cigars home and wonder in the cold light of day if perhaps the $3000 dollar box of cigars you just bought for $300 from a random guy on the street might not be totally authentic.

A good friend of mine used to run a pub with his brother in the embassies' neighborhood in Paris. Very fancy, he had a customer who smoked Behike 56s every time he came, a very wealthy man. As a cigar smoker himself, my friend finally talked to him about his cigars and how impressive/elusive/expensive they were. The man told him he bought them 450€ per bundle of 25 and that it was all he smoked. He gifted him two of those, one's sitting somewhere in my basement.

[El Presidente]

We had a good gathering on the cigar deck last Friday when a good mate who lives OS 6 months a year and here the other 6, produced a Monte 2. He buys them by the box in the Middle East for $600 USD. The contact has a contact in Cuba. 

I asked to look at it pre-light and he passed it across. Beautiful cigar. 

I asked him how long he had been buying them. A box a month for two years. He loves them. Never had a bad one, never a construction issue.

I asked him to wait a moment and retrieved a Monte 2 from the humidor. 

Passing him my Monte 2, I asked him to take in the aroma of both cigars at cold.

"Very different" he says

"That's because yours is Dominican" I said.

He got s***ty. Not because his cigar was fake, but because he shouldn't be paying $600 USD for a fake box.

I agreed. $200-$250 would be the right price if he indeed enjoy them 😉

Now I know full well, he would never have bought them originally if they were offered at $250. 

$600 was a plausible amount in his mind for an inside deal on Cuban Monte 2.

[Garand]

With current low stock why would anyone sell original cigars below market price. And because of internet all information asymmetry is gone anyways. There are no deals anymore.

[xiangnan]

15 hours ago, El Presidente said:

We had a good gathering on the cigar deck last Friday when a good mate who lives OS 6 months a year and here the other 6,produced a Monte 2. He buys them by the box in the Middle East for $600 USD. The contact has a contact in Cuba. 

I asked to look at it pre-light and he passed it across. Beautiful cigar. 

I asked him how long he had been buying them. A box a month for two years. He loves them. Never had a bad one, never a construction issue.

I asked him to wait a moment and retrieved a Monte 2 from the humidor. 

Passing him my Monte 2, I asked him to take in the aroma of both cigars at cold.

"Very different" he says

"That's because yours is Dominican" I said.

He got s***ty. Not because his cigar was fake, but because he shouldn't be paying $600 USD for a fake box.

I agreed. $200-$250 would be the right price if he indeed enjoy them 😉

Now I know full well, he would never have bought them originally if they were offered at $250. 

$600 was a plausible amount in his mind for an inside deal on Cuban Monte 2.

That’s exactly it. At $600, the price itself became part of the provenance. At $600, he trusted the story.

[ha_banos]

15 hours ago, xiangnan said:

That’s exactly it. At $600, the price itself became part of the provenance. At $600, he trusted the story. 

Perhaps not trusted the story. But want to believe the story. Reinforcing biases.

[Fugu]

11 hours ago, ATGroom said:

Case in point the Cohiba 30th Aniversario cigars posted by @xiangnan. They are a 30 year old ultra-rare of which only 2,250 sticks were ever produced.

But, hey, at least you don’t have to worry about their 30-yr storage history. Big pro, don’t you just see that?! 😅

[BrightonCorgi]

I stick to authorized retailers and I don't chase the hard to obtain stuff.

[Ryan]

On the other hand. I bought two of these in La Piragua Park last week and we smoked them with a beer on the steps of the Maine monument watching the show. The wrappers were actually very good. The cigar was boring and a little bitter. But at 400 cup (about 60 cents US) I’ve spent 100 times that on cigars I’ve enjoyed less. The night before, I spent 10,000 cup ($15) on another fake from security in a nightclub for a friend, having run out, with a worse band and wrapper that was nowhere near as good. 60 cents can be good value for a cigar if you have no expectations.

I bought the rest of that tub later that night. Less than $3, and ended up leaving them behind me.

[El Presidente]

Great memories Andy 

I remember being at the La Cecilia Open air nightclub in Miramar. We had a table for 10 and somehow ran out of cigars. I recall going to the bathrooms where at the entrance they were selling Cohiba Lanceros...in a cup just like your picture...for under a $1. I bought a dozen. 

They were horrendous. 

 

[ha_banos]

So much for Cuban tobacco being magical then, eh? What are we told? You have to be an idiot to mess up Cuban tobacco.