Stogie Tip: Cigar Auctions

In the past, we have directed our readers to great deals for quality cigars at bargain prices. Today, we’re going to share a few tips on finding bargain cigars on your own.

These days, instead of ordering cigars from catalogs with fixed prices, many people turn to cigar auctions to buy cigars in eBay-style markets. While not every item is going to offer you substantial savings, if you look patiently and don’t get caught up in bidding wars you can find some real bargains on good cigars.

While there are other auction sites, I’ve been using JR Auctions and CigarBid. Both work in mostly the same way.

JR Auctions is run by JR Cigars (obviously), while CigarBid is run by Cigar International. This is important because one of the first things you should do is check at what price they sell the item you are bidding on in their non-auction section. JR allows you to combine shipping between auction and non-auction items so there is never any reason to pay more. CigarBid orders cannot be combined with Cigar International orders, but the savings from combined shipping (usually just a few bucks) rarely justify spending more than CI’s retail price.

Despite this, cigar forums are filled with stories of people who get caught up trying to outbid someone for an auction item and end up paying too much. So I recommend deciding early how much you are willing to pay, setting auto-bid (where you enter the maximum amount and then allow the site to raise your bid as necessary) and then simply waiting…You may win, you may lose, but you’ll never overpay.

Finally, I highly recommend the 5 packs that CigarBid offers. If you have a cigar you really want to try, often a single stogie isn’t enough to decide if you really like it, but a full box is too large of an investment. Five packs let you really get to know a cigar, including determining its consistency. Just last week I grabbed two 5-packs (Rocky Patel Vintage 1990 and 1992) together for less than what Cigar International would have charged me for just one of them.

Now go out and fill up your humidor! Just don’t out-bid the Stogie Guys.

-Patrick S