Help a Newbie - Beginners cigar selection

[cavanor]

Guys a bit of a tricky one. I am wanting to get 50-75 sticks from a reputable online dealer to start a humidor. Looks like I am getting a bit of a tax refund so would have a bit to spend. This would be easy if I was in the US but I am in AUSTRALIA. I have previously smoked some cheaper cuban Romeo Y Julieta, montecristos etc and your run of the mill gas station cigars. Are there any must haves I should really try (I think I have a reasonable palate for tobacco as I smoke a pipe also). Things to consider. Any advice would help!

1. I will pay about the purchase price in tobacco tax and sales tax when the sticks hit Australia.

2. I would prefer to buy in bundles of 5.

3. While Australia has cubans, the range is fairly limited and we don't have any of the other South American/Caribbean.

3. I would prefer to pay under $7.50 a stick.

[AcridSaint]

Are you trying to pay under $7.50 before or after your duties?

[pitbulljimmy]

For non-cuban cigars look at Atlantic Cigars maybe... I know they ship discreetly to Canada, and I think they ship Int'l too, you may even avoid some of those pesky taxes... and the prices are top-notch compared to what we're paying up here in Canada anyways, I'm assuming they're cheaper than what you get down there too.

Good luck and happy hunting!

[cavanor]

Yeah $7.50 before taxes. I think we have about the same level of tax as canada.

[AcridSaint]

There are a ton of good smokes under that price then, especially if you're willing to go into robusto sizes, the longer cigars seem to go up quickly at times. Famous Smoke has five packs of most of the cigars they offer and they also have a create your own sampler deal where you can choose five singles and you get the cheapest of the five for free. I've had good luck with Onyx Reserve, the CAO lines, Arturo Fuente, Alec Bradley etc. I would buy a couple of less expensive boxes as well as some higher end singles or five packs.

Some less expensive cigars that I really enjoy are the Onyx Reserves and A.Fuente Curly Head series. I like the Curly Head Deluxe Maduro the best of all curly heads that I've tried. These are very inexpensive and decent smokes. They have an Alec Bradley sampler that comes out to five bucks a stick for 6 different cigars which looks like a good introduction into their lines. I'm sure other people will come by with more options, I'm just a newbie smoker, I've only been doing it seriously for a month or two, so keep that point of view in mind.

[cavanor]

I think I really will stick to robusto or toro. Generally I don't have the time for a 1hr + smoke.

[Herf N Turf]

Originally Posted by cavanor

I think I really will stick to robusto or toro. Generally I don't have the time for a 1hr + smoke.

If you can smoke a toro in less than an hour, youre a tougher cowboy than me. It's rare that I can smoke a good robusto in less than an hour.

If that's your time range, stick to vitola like a corona. A well made corona is just about 45min-1hr. These are most often the vitola the blenders smoke and generally offer the best examples of intended flavors.

If I were you, I would take advantage of living downunder and stock my humi initially with cubans.

After a couple years of smoking cigars, I got pretty heavy into cubans for a while. They were about all I smoked for about five years. They taught me a lot about what to look for in a good non-cuban and even how to distinguish a good from a bad cuban. I took a rather long hiatus from cigars, but when I came back to them, my memories were still there. I no longer had access to CC's, so I had to learn the whole NC lexicon like a noob. Now, thankfully, I have the option of smoking both, but I remain grateful that CC's are my baseline for appreciation. YMMV

[cavanor]

Now that I think about it currently I regularly smoke petit robustos so take no notice of my 1hr limit. A petit usually takes me 45 mins.