The World’s Most Expensive Cigars Go Up for Auction

While all premium cigars can be considered luxury items, few are as luxurious as the ones recently up for auction in London, England. Among the wide array of expensive cigars for sale, the top lot was a collection of 155 Cuban Partegas in a custom-made humidor that sold for a cool $14,100. That sum doesn’t include the buyer’s cost of traveling to Geneva, Switzerland, to procure the cigars from their climate-controlled vault at Davidoff headquarters.

Even more expensive on a per-cigar basis was a partial box of only six Dunhill cigars manufactured in the 1980s that sold for £4,000, or over $1,000 per smoke in U.S. dollars.

Who buys these insanely expensive smokes? According to auctioneer Brian Ebbesen, the big money is in vintage cigars.

“There are about two to 300 people ’round the world who regularly buy them. The market’s hard to grow, as cigars like this have not been produced since 1989 when Cuba kicked out Davidoff and Dunhill and all the main producers. The supply is literally drying up.

“Producers are coming up with nice limited editions like the 2003 double coronas or the 2001 pyramids, but sourcing good vintage cigars is increasingly hard, and you need a good network.”

And obviously, a lot of money.