Singles or boxes: the honest arithmetic
Boxes are cheaper per cigar and more expensive per mistake.
A box costs perhaps 10 to 20 per cent less per cigar and commits you to twenty-five of something you have smoked once. That trade decides itself differently depending on how much of your shelf is already a mistake.
The case for boxes
- Price per cigar is lower, sometimes substantially.
- Consistency: one production run, one moisture history, so ageing is legible.
- Ageing works properly in the original cedar box.
- Availability: lines get discontinued and prices rise; a box of something you love is insurance.
The case for singles
You do not yet know if you like it. That is the whole argument, and it is usually the stronger one. Buying two or three singles of a blend and smoking them a month apart tells you more than reading twenty reviews.
Do this: before buying a box, smoke two of that blend at least three weeks apart. One cigar is one evening; two separated in time tells you whether the first one was the cigar or the mood.
A rule that works
Singles to discover, boxes to commit. Keep no more than two or three boxes of things you have not yet proven to yourself, and buy the rest as singles or fivers.
The hidden cost of a box
Storage space, and attention. Twenty-five cigars of one blend crowd out variety, and a humidor with three boxes in it is a shelf where nothing new gets tried. That is a real cost even when the arithmetic looks good.
Two entries before twenty-five cigars
The journal is what makes "smoke two, a month apart" workable: both entries carry a score out of ten and your own words, and the second sits next to the first. Deciding on a box then becomes reading rather than guessing.
Read next
Splitting a box with friends, and what you lose by doing it
You gain variety and give up the one thing a full box is for.
Buying & authenticityReading a cigar band
Brand, line, factory marks and the words that are there purely to sell.
Storage & ageingWhat two years does to a cigar, and when waiting stops paying
Ageing trades sharpness for coherence. That is a trade, not an upgrade.