Price per hour: a saner way to compare cigars
A twenty-euro cigar that lasts two hours is cheaper than a ten-euro one that lasts forty minutes.
Divide the price by the hours it burns. It is a crude measure and it exposes something real: cigar prices scale with size far more than with quality, so the apparent bargain is often the shorter smoke.
The arithmetic
A €10 robusto over 50 minutes costs €12 an hour. A €18 toro over 90 minutes costs €12 an hour. They are the same purchase, and the second one lasts an evening rather than an interval.
Run this on your own shelf and the results are usually surprising — most people find their "expensive" cigars are mid-priced by the hour and their cheap ones are not cheap at all.
Where it breaks down
Enjoyment is not linear with time. A brilliant forty minutes beats a mediocre two hours, and a long cigar you abandon halfway costs its full price for half the value. Price per hour is a comparison tool, not a scoring system.
Do this: calculate it for the three cigars you buy most often. That one exercise tends to change buying habits more than any review, because it makes visible what the shelf label hides.
The occasion premium
Some cigars are worth paying for by the occasion rather than the hour: an anniversary, a first evening in a new place. That is a legitimate reason to spend money and it has nothing to do with value — the mistake is telling yourself it was about the tobacco.
What to record
Not the price — the app does not keep prices, and honestly you do not need them in a tasting record. What is worth noting is whether you would buy it again, which is the same judgement with the arithmetic already done.
No prices, on purpose
Ligero records no prices at all: what you paid is nobody else’s business and it is not what a tasting record is for. What it does keep is "would buy it again" beside your score — the part of the value judgement that still means something a year later.
Read next
Singles or boxes: the honest arithmetic
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Formats & vitolasChoosing a format by the time you actually have
The most common mistake in a humidor is a cigar bought for an evening that never happens.
Storage & ageingHow many cigars is the right number to keep
Enough that something is always ready, few enough that you know what you own.