Tobacco Beetle Experiences

[ggiese]

A few years back I was in Nassau, Bahamas in one of the cheesy cigar shops (selling Kooban cigars and all sorts of crazy "stuff") along the cruise port area. I chuckled when I came across a "bruised and reduced" box of ratty cigars - most of which had multiple patched up beetle holes.

The other freaky story I have was when I attended a large herf in Central Illinois. There must have been several hundred cigar smokers attending. One of the participants (never met him before) approached me and offered a cigar from a brand new box he'd won in a raffle (something like domestic Partagas - nothing special). He'd already passed out nearly half he box. I lifted a cigar out from the bottom row (untouched and solidly packed) and it broke apart in my hand. He pulled all of the bottom row out and every cigar in that row was destroyed by beetle damage. And beetle larvae were everywhere! Needless to say - people were freaking out because a number of attendees had some very expensive rare aged and collectable Cubans (e.g. Davidoff and Dunhill Cubans). The poor guy was nearly tackled to the floor and tossed to the curb...

[CptnBlues63]

Whew! I'm glad you refreshed this Will, I hadn't seen it before.

Luckily I've yet to see any beetles, or holes, in any of my cigars but I'm definitely going to inspect them all this weekend. Sadly, that won't take me near as long as I wish it would take!

Since starting to smoke cigars I refrained from buying too many during winter months because I was concerned about them freezing. Now I no long have concerns and will likely swap that around to doing most of my purchasing during winter where I know the cigars will freeze a couple times over before I take them home!