Blog & Cigar News | Mardo Cigars

Hi, welcome to another episode of Mondays with Mardos. I'm Gerard, and today we got big hitter Neil Garcia here right next to me. This week we're going to talk about what we spent way too much money on but it was so worth it.

All right you guys. This week obviously I got my partner in crime. We're going to talk about a topic that is a social media topic. Spent way too much money on it, but it was so worth it. The reason why Neil's here, he's going to attest to it. We do nothing, what is the word, half A-S-S. A lot of us spend a lot of money on certain things like our hobbies or whatever has to do with something that we really hold near and dear to us like our toys and things of that nature. Doesn't matter how old we get, we always do that. When it comes to cigars, a lot of us have very large collections of OpusX, secondary market purchases of Cuban cigars, limited additional Liggott Privadas. What did we do, Neil, when it came to that? What happened?

Well, it's evolved over the years to say the least. I remember getting old, maybe 15 years ago when we first started getting into the Cuban world and we're spending just ridiculous amounts of money on Cuban cigars, which is even crazier nowadays. As time went on, it kind of evolved to what is a very, very good cigar. But for us, what transpired with us when we got involved doing what we're doing here is what we did is we went and spent more money on anything. We went and opened a damn factory.

Yes, we did.

We didn't do it traditionally. What we had done is we'd gone down with some friends to visit to do some exclusive blends at a couple big large factories in the Dominican Republic. Man, we fell in love like children at Christmas time. We really did. What we did with that was, if we were going to open up a factory, we had to basically have control. We didn't want to do any white label type stuff. We wanted to have our hands in the soil. We wanted to pick these things right here and make sure all of our leaves, all of our blends were to our liking, and it was not cheap. I'll say that for sure.

Back to the topic, end up talking. Now, when it comes to cigars, there have been many times where I am very cheap regarding the craziness that you'll see cigars that are 80, 90, 100, $200 a cigar. There's a lot of good cigars out there, but I don't think I'd ever be spending that kind of money on a cigar. Some people do. Some people have expendable cash and more power to them. I'm just a little cheap for that. How about you? You're more than me. You'll go spend some money on exclusive stuff.

No, but I'm with you on it. To smoke, definitely not. I'm not going to spend a lot of money to smoke on that cigar. Now, we are lucky, we do get a lot of cigars gifted. We do have a lot of friends in the industry that we get a lot of the cigars. Now, one of the purchases I have made which was very expensive was the-

Cohiba.

... release of the Cohiba Majestuosos. In 2016, Cohiba turned 50 years of age, so therefore I had to get a couple pieces of that cigar within my collection, I guess you would say. But when it comes to collection, we really don't collect anything. The only thing I collect, I collect a lot of Ezra Zion because I like the stickers, I like the things of that nature.

Well, shoot, about a year or so ago when those Opus Dubais came out. Now, speaking of going overboard, those things were all the money and then some. But golly, that cigar was really damn good.

Yeah. But we didn't collect them.

No, no. We smoked them suckers, right? Didn't collect them.

That's the issue.

I smoked like two, I think.

It's hard to collect. The thing is about collecting cigars, one of my biggest fears is that what if a beetle breaks out? You know what I mean?

I know.

There goes your whole entire-

I agree. For those of you don't know, so as cigars age, you want to keep them in the best environment, but sometimes you cannot prevent some of the beetles that happen inside of the cigars and that kind of stuff. So it is a little bit of a risk and a gamble when you're a collector holding on to-

A lot of cigars.

... old school stuff. Yeah.

You got to really rotate your cigars. You got to check them every once in a while and make sure there's no mold growing on them, not over-humidified. It's a lot of work to collect cigars.

We know there's a bunch of you guys out there that have spent crazy money on single cigars, boxes cigars, collectibles. We'd love to hear about what that has been for you. Again, for us, I love smoking. I don't like collecting. There was a time when you'd have to have all the high end accessories and that kind stuff. Still love them, but as I've gotten older, I just like smoking a fine cigar like this one.

Let us know in the comments what your collection looks like, where you like your collection to be at. See you guys next week. Remember to follow us on Instagram, like us on Facebook. Remember, tell your friends to subscribe to our YouTube channel. See you guys.

Take care.