Blog & Cigar News | Mardo Cigars

Hi, and welcome to another episode of Mondays with Mardo's. I'm Gerard, and this week we're going to talk about how to buy the right humidor. But before I get going, I need you to click on that subscribe button, click on the bell to be notified every single week of new episodes of Mondays with Mardo's.

All right, so we have two humidors here. Both of them on one end of the spectrum, one is extremely less expensive, and one is very expensive. But the point here, we're going to show you the craftsmanship and how it's going to affect the care of your cigars.

All right, so in front of us, we have a humidor that's very simple. It's anywhere between 20 to 30 count. It does have a pretty good seal, but what makes this humidor low quality? Obviously the price tag, it's $50 to $60 price range. So you want to look at the interior. As you can see, one of the first tests that I do, the bottom is a very, very thin layer of wood. It sounds very hollow, sounds very, very thin. Something like this is not going to hold a seal very, very long. Eventually things do break down, the interior of this does not have Spanish cedar inserts like you will see in the more higher end humidors. These just basically have veneer, Spanish cedar that's going to be very, very thin. It's not going to hold humidity very, very well.

The hinges are just some very regular, small little hinges in the back of the humidor. I can see the paint that's been sprayed right here, there's a little bit of a drip in the paint. The craftsmanship is not all there. You can see that right here. I can still see some line right here that was never stained, the wood was still bare. The price tag is a big deal. Again, you want to take a look at the kind of wood it is. This is not real, real wood, meaning it's not true sycamore or walnut or burl wood or anything like that. This is just straight manufactured wood, slapped together. You can still see the glue lines. I can see some cracks over here when the woods come together, or I should say the pieces come together. So, something like this is good to keep your cigars humid, but eventually it's going to break down. It's going to come apart. It's not going to last very, very long. So now we're going to move on to something more high-end and show you what the differences are.

All right. So here we have a humidor that is very elaborate on the exterior, but that's not our focus here. And yes, this is a very expensive humidor, but the example is really, really good here. As you can see, first things first, when you open the humidor, you can hear the hinges. Look at these hinges. They're very thick, very well-made, very good hardware. These are made in France. This humidor actually is made out of sycamore wood. So when you look at the wood right here, this is actual, real wood, it's not manufactured. So that gives it a lot of value and it's going to be a lot denser, so it's going to keep the humidity in there.

And when I remove all the packaging stuff in here, you can take a look at the inserts and you can see at the edge over here, opposed to the one that was inexpensive. It did not have actual inserts. You see that, there's differentiation between the actual wood of the humidor. And this right here is actual real Spanish cedar inserts. And that is what you want in a humidor to keep humidity. And as you can see, it has some thickness to it, it's not just a veneer.

So right off the bat, I know this is a high-end humidor. This one does cost thousands of dollars, but that is because of the elaborate exterior. It does have the Fuente logo on it, it's a very limited. But you can go to Prometheus, their website, and take a look at other humidors that are smaller and sizes, just as good quality. That's going to run you about $300 to $400. There's other brands out there called Diamond Crown, there's Elie Bleu. But that is really the biggest difference between, the differentiation is what you want to look for. It's not rocket science, just look for something that is real word, actually has Spanish cedar inserts, and that is the key to picking the right cigar humidor for yourself.

Other than that, let me know in the comments, what is your experience with humidors? I'll see you guys next week. Remember to follow us on Instagram, like us on Facebook, and I'll see you guys next week. And don't forget to tell your friends to subscribe to our YouTube channel.