I thoroughly enjoyed my usual rather crazy schedule last week, spending half the week showing auction bidders Lots for the Summer sale, and the other half of the week in sunny Scotland at Robert Graham Ltd.
First stop was our ridiculously fabulous Glasgow shop (known as Global Whisky Shop) which is rather huge and very crammed with the water of life and just about every tobacco item you could dream of 🙂
As you enter the shop, we have a comprehensive range of Davidoff cigars in the beautiful Davidoff humidor which I understand is gaining popularity by the day. Moving through the walls of whisky to our super walk in humidor at the back of the store your eyes are treated to a feast of new world cigars including Fuente, Inka and Alec Bradley and of course a massive range of the finest Havana cigars. Linda, Aiden and Alison assure C.Gars clients a very warm welcome.
Wednesday evening was time to meet up with old and new friends from the Ceo Mor Cigar Club (don’t ask me to pronounce it!). Ron and I joined a terribly nice bunch of chaps at the Corinthian Hotel on Ingram street for dinner followed by drinks and plenty of smokes on the smoking terrace. I think this will be the start of a regular gathering of like-minded cigar smokers and could become a regular herf for me.
My only problem was that the more the Scottish chaps drank the less of their accents I could understand… or is it, the more scotch that I drank…?!
We herfed our way through Inka – Secret Blend Tres Petit Coronas as an ‘aperitif’ smoke, Alec Bradley Black Market as a main course and Montecristo Petit Edmundo for dessert. Fair to say a great night was enjoyed by all and my thanks to Murdoch ( don’t ask me how to pronounce his name !) for organizing it.
I then moved to Edinburgh for a long day on Thursday visiting Robert Graham shops on Rose street and Canongate. Rose street is managed by the lovely Jo assisted by Hector. The shop recently had some extensive walk in humidor remodelling and I must say we have a great result. Massive range and space to move around!
Canongate is ably managed by Keith and Dougie and has become a bit of a quirky whisky emporium with lots of rare and very old bottles of single malt just about everywhere you look. It does of course also have a lovely range of premium cigars in the walk in humidor. No surprise that our award winning ranges of Dancing Stag and Treasurer are the best sellers. I sampled some of our cask strength 19 year old Deanston and it was too good for words.
Yesterday was auction time again and our Summer sale was a huge online success. This followed the success of our Spring Auction in March but was bigger and even better 🙂 We had a splendid catalogue of 350 Lots of all types of vintage, aged and rare cigars. The sale had around a 98% sell rate which is as high as our live auctions held at Boisdale.
It was incredible to see over 1000 site visitors at times as I didn’t know we even had that many online auction clients. In fact what is more incredible is that we developed the entire auction website platform in house and it worked smoothly to perfection. Well done to my IT Team.
I had predicted some 5 years ago when we started holding cigar auctions that pre embargo cigar were dramatically undervalued and simply had to start increasing substantially. Well, I was right… But my timing was wrong as we have only started to see the prices increase in the last year. That means that buyers at our earlier auctions really did bag some bargains.
Some of the pre embargo prices achieved at the Summer sale were quite staggering so I have little doubt our sellers are very happy today.
Prices on Davidoff cigars remain exceptionally firm and Dunhill cigar prices continue to increase. Limited edition prices looked a tad soft to me but limited edition humidor prices seemed to fair well. Good quality aged and mature cigars were as popular as expected.
Bidders seem to have changed tactic from earlier auctions and those with fast connections were clearly having fun doing sniping bids in the closing seconds of the auction! I hope everyone enjoyed the 12 hours of online action as much as I did 🙂
Holed up in my study at home I chomped my way through 2 Cohiba Piramides Extra, 3 Siglo VI and a Dom Perignon in the last hour!
Thanks to all of our sellers and bidders for participating in the Summer auction.
We are now in the process of invoicing all successful bidders and Lots will be ready for collection from tomorrow.
Our Winter auction is as blogged previously set for the 1st December at Boisdale Canary Wharf. The usual sparkly Ranald and Mitchell show 🙂 It will be quite an event and tickets will be available online in the next week or so.
We are now accepting Lots for entry into the Winter auction but please… If you have come back from a holiday in Cuba with a box of Cohiba Esplendidos (or any other cigars for that matter)… We are not interested. The clue is the ‘aged and rare cigar auction’.
We are interested in Cuban cigars only, discontinued or pre 1997 with provenance and in good – excellent condition only. I am always happy to offer a free valuation service… Email for details [email protected]
You may like to see this photo of one of the worst counterfeits I have ever seen in my career (more below)  🙂
We have auctioned zillions of cigars since 2009 and we keep all sold prices on our auction websites as a permanent resource. Some useful links:
Online Auctions – Click the ‘Sold Lots’ tab or check out the PDF catalogues for estimates.
Offline Auctions – Use the ‘Auction Search’ function or check out the PDF catalogues for estimates.
Well after all the action of the last few months, I have decided to do the unthinkable and take a ‘real break’. Could be the first time I can remember doing this in the last 17 years but I am actually turning my BBerry off for a few days this week and heading to a health farm to recharge my batteries.
The plan: Swimming, walking, hiking, yoga, meditation, massage, no booze, no phones, no computers. There will be a baggie of Havana cigars though 🙂 … Returning refreshed on Friday!
Have a great week,
Peaceful puffing,
Mitchell
