Blog & Cigar News | Mardo Cigars

Hi, and welcome to another episode of Mondays with Mardo's. I'm Gerard. On this week cigar guide, we're going to talk about what are the best ways to shop for aged cigars, but before I get going, I need you to click on that subscribe button, click on the bells to be notified every single week of new episodes on Mondays with Mardo's.

One of the ways you can find the aging of the cigar, or age date, traditionally Cuban cigar boxes always have the box date and a factory code. On the bottom, you're going to see a factory code. In Cuba, they use a three letter factory code, and then they're going to have the month and then they're going to have the year. This one is from February 21. And that's how you're going to know if this stuff has been sitting for a while or not. In this case it's a 2021, from February, so it has a few months, which is good if you want to smoke them right away. I got Aganorsa Leaf from Nicaragua also puts box dates as well. They actually put the day ended, month, and the year. This is May 5th, 2021. And the factory code for them is Tabsa.

Another brand, Obviously Jake Wyatt, we do the factory code, which is just Jake Wyatt Factory. And then we do the month and then also the year. This is May, 2021. My Father Cigars is another one that does the box dates. Steve Saka does it on some of their boxes. What you can do is you can start educating yourself, which manufacturer does put box date and stamps on the bottom of their boxes. Therefore, that is one way you can find out, and figure out, how to shop for aged cigars.

All right. Another way you can figure out if the cigar has been aged a while or not, when you're at a brick and mortar shop and you look at the cigars individually, you can take a look at the discoloring of the cellophane. This is going to be prominent right at the creases at the foot of the cigar, and newly fresh packaged cigar with a cellophane at the creases, the color is going to be all uniform. It's going to be clear. It's going to be pretty clean looking. And therefore you're going to know this is a freshly packed cigar.

The giveaway on this one right here, obviously, is the yellowing color of the cellophane, and also the price tag. You can tell it's been there for quite some time. This is a very good indication of an aged cigar. Unfortunately, you may not know the exact date, but seeing yellowing, like this, will take often years, so you know there's some years of age on this cigar. What are we going to do, we're going to take a picture and see the difference between the yellowing of a cellophane with some age on it, and this one, a freshly packed cigar that does not have any aging on it. And you guys are going to be able to tell the difference. That's another way of being able to tell if you're getting an aged cigar or not.

All right. Another great way to shop for aged cigars is developing a great relationship with your local tobacconist. Simply just ask them what they have that's been sitting on a shelf for quite some time. They usually have a pretty good knowledge of what they have in backstock and you guys can check and look if they do have box dates, or if he just basically knows what's going on. For instance, at mardocigars.com, we use RFID tags. These RFID tags are identifiers for us to check our inventory by just scanning our wand within our humidor to know how old, or how long, and what we have in stock. We have born dates on these tags. Whenever these tags are produced and stuck on the cellophanes to know what it is that we have, it also lets us know when we created this tag so we will know how long we've had this product on hand.

In addition to that, mardocigars.com does have a new feature called the Aging Room. And we have a lot of cigars in there that we've had in our inventory for up to three to four years. If you are very interested in aged cigars, and you want to do some shopping, have some fun with it, you can go to mardocigars.com, go to the feature called the Aging Room and peruse. We have anything from one year, all the way up to three years. Other than that, let's hear in your comments, what are some of the strategies you use to find some aged cigars? Other than that, I'll see you guys next week. Remember to follow us on Instagram, like us on Facebook, and remember to tell your friends to subscribe to our YouTube channel. See you guys.