So, when I was in Havana last month, I had the chance to go LCDH browsing.  I found some decent cigar stocks at various locations, and some interesting goodies, as outlined here.  Well, when I popped in to the LCDH shop at the Habana Libre hotel, I found two sets of special humidors available there.

Generally, various LCDH shops can get special “limited edition” humidors done, and these are sometimes specifically set out for display purposes for the Encuentros Partagas in November, but almost always for the Festival Habanos in February.  Not too many hotels/LCDH’s take part in these offerings that frequently, as they need time to get them done, cost issues, space to house them in-store, high-traffic needs for sales to make it a worthwhile venture, etc., etc.  However, along with the Partagas LCDH, the Habana Libre LCDH always seems to have something special in stock, and this February was no different.

Available there was the Omara Portuondo record player humidor – something that I actually neglected to take pictures of, but that Nino also did a write-up and gallery of it on his blog too.

But this thing in particular caught my eye, as it was like a little wine rack…

Thankfully, I was wiser than to let it catch my pocket book.

This humidor is the “Cohiba Silver”, which one of the staff members told me is “the most best [!!!!] way to showcase and properly store the most best [again!!!!] that Cuba has to offer”.  Well, while all that’s up for debate, what’s not for debate is that the seal on these was not the greatest at all, and this little humidor cabinet appears to be simply a showpiece – not an adequate long-term storage medium for cigars to be kept at proper RH.

While beautiful, it wasn’t $530 CUC’s beautiful.  That’s right – five HUNDRED and thirty cookies!  And as the pictures show – only for a lowly 10 cigars.

Fuck.  That.  Noise.

Add to it that the cigars are your choice of only two options, as far as it was explained to me – either 10 sticks of Cohiba Siglo VI, I believe it was, or the same amount of Cohiba Piramides Extra tubos.  That’s right, ladies and gents – only 10 cigars, normal regular production no less, and then a (albeit beautiful) small cabinet that only holds those 10 sticks, and doesn’t seal very well.

I mean, some of these releases, while expensive, are still quite nice and can be considered fairly good value, for what you’re getting in the overall picture of things.  But not this one.

Looks like they’re trying to milk it for all it’s worth, and one day the stone ain’t gonna have no more blood to let.

I was quite aghast when the staff member was telling me the specifics above.  Other than that, it’s a special edition of “only 100 humidors” (sure), with special numbering placards inside and outside of the little cabinets, with a special paper certificate as well, and even a specially marked outer shipping container.

I also noted that of the various stacks in the store, they almost all seemed to have little white paper stickers in the upper left-hand corner of the shipping boxes.  Yup – buyers’ names on there.  GREAT!!!!  So now anyone browsing through will know who bought what, and which rich-cats may have bought a dozen or more at once (all the better to know who to rob, my dear!)  When I was in there, there was actually a beautiful but shy, young asian lady who was working with the staff in organizing shipping arrangements for what sounded like it was her employer, whom had bought what I think was 6 or 7 of them.

Sorry, but while somewhat beautiful, the concept on these special humidor releases are getting crazier and crazier lately (save for that of the ones at Partagas last November, with the various artist-painted and varied-themes humidors holding Sir Winnies and Partagas Lusi’s, I think it was – but even those were horribly expensive, but yet somewhat justifiable too, given the rarity and uniqueness due to the one-of-a-kind artistic nature of them).

However, even though I choose not to partake in buying these (and really am not rich enough to afford to be that wilfully stupid in buying something like this), I still respect the artistic nature that goes into something like this.  Just wish the LCDH’s / Habanos S.A. weren’t milking it for all it was worth, or at least were spreading the wealth equally with the humidor manufacturers (given that the cigars aren’t worth much of the overall collectibility of these).

All that said, thought I’d share it here.

Cheers all.