eBay Fake

[skid11]

Hi All,

I often check out eBay cigar stuff for interesting items etc and recently noticed "spotting fake cuban cigars" by Art of Cigars for US$10.00 call me dumb "................DUMB:-D " I invested the price of a Monty No.4 and bought it, only to find it was a really poor power point presentation containing all info freely available on the net via a google search. Don't get sucked in like me However, it did get me researching a bit myself and some even better sites on this subject are [link]www.cigars-of-cuba.com/advice/advice_fake.asp [/link]also [link]www.cigar-smoke.com/Spotting_Fakes[/link]

Happy Puffs

[El Presidente]

$10 !

Most of the information on fake cigars is well out of date. It deserves a thread of it's own as Ido not believ a current resource exists.

[skid11]

Well $10.58 AUD + Postage!:-P

Thanks El Presidente that sounds like a good idea. Although, I wonder if a site on spotting fakes only serves to help dodgy rip off artists perfect their dodgy skills. It would also be interesting to hear of any rip off stories by other members.

[rspdiver]

CigarNexus.com has a pretty decent fake education section, though it's dated. I think the single best piece of advice for the budding cigar buyer/collector is: If a deal seems extremely good, almost too good to be true, it likely is.

Case in point: the recent rash of first run ELs popping up on the market at reasonable prices. Many come from "forgotten stashes" and such. It's BS. I'm sure Rob will attest that selling cigars, not saving them to try to sell later, pays the bills around his place.

Caveat emptor

[El Presidente]

Every faker is awake to the old standby's of :

Box stamps

Poor Bands

Cedar serration

Cap construction

out of date Box codes

The real money is in Aged stock (i.e we have some 93 Cohiba Robusto's) or LE stock (particularly Millenium) which has become available because a retailer on hard times has gone to the wall and "we have picked up his Havana stockpile".

1. Any retailer having a few cash flow problems liquidates his most sought after stock.

2. Habanos s.a has storage facilities for distributors not retailers.

3. Succesfull retailers tend to sell their stock. Aged stock of sought after vitola's + 8 years tends to come only from private collections.

[skid11]

Check out this link current to 2004 ;-)

[link]www.cigarweekly.com/community/resources/cuban_box_codes.asp[/link]

Happy Puffs:waving: