5 Things You Need to Know About Cigar Boxes

Cigar Advisor Magazine published a guide, titled, “5 Things You Need to Know About… Cigar Boxes.” The new feature is written by Managing Editor John Pullo, and highlights what he calls “five little-known and seldom-used facts” about cigar boxes. His report discusses the first-ever cigar box, the differences of Cuban cigar boxes, and storing cigars in their factory box.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to have your name on a cigar box?” asks John Pullo, Cigar Advisor Managing Editor. He’s compiled “5 Things You Need to Know About…Cigar Boxes” — a brief look at some interesting facts he believes most cigar enthusiasts didn’t know about their hobby’s ubiquitous cedar boxes. “Two German bankers — brothers — are really who had the idea first, and are responsible for the boxes like we see in shops across the country,” John says. He writes that the brothers used those boxes of cigars as gifts for their bank’s most influential clients. “Basically, a marketing gimmick,” he notes.

Pullo’s “5 Things” list also discusses the U.S. Government’s mandating of cigar packaging in 1863 (“until then, there wasn’t much government regulation regarding the manufacture and packaging of cigars at the time”), and what role the cigar box played in the roots of American Blues music. “Poverty ravaged the South during the Depression,” says John. “Blues artists had the skills to make the music, but not the money to buy the real instruments. So they made their own, with found items — like cigar boxes.” He references famous Blues musicians like Lightnin’ Hopkins, Buddy Guy and Blind Willie Johnson, and notes their shared connection to learning to play on instruments like the cigar box guitar.

John also describes what he calls “the secret code system on Cuban cigar boxes,” and lays out a timeline of how those marks changed through recent history — all in an effort to hamper the efforts of those counterfeiting Cuban cigars.

John has also included a checklist of how to keep cigars fresh in their factory sealed box; to read “5 Things You Need to Know About… Cigar Boxes.”

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