Spendy Cigars That Will Set You Back $100 (And More)
Slapping a $100 bill on a cigar shop counter is usually enough to buy you several cigars, and it wasn’t all that long ago when that amount could even cover the cost of an entire box of decent smokes. But cigar prices have risen, and today there are several cigars with extraordinary price tags. Here are several cigars with suggested retail prices of $100 or more per cigar—sometimes shockingly more.
Rocky Patel Conviction: $100
Rocky Patel recently previewed his most expensive cigar ever: Rocky Patel Conviction. It features extraordinary packaging, and is made with what Patel calls the oldest tobaccos in his inventory. “We wanted to make something that screams luxury,” he says. Conviction had its coming-out party at the 2023 PCA trade show, each cigar packed in heavy, squared metal tubes the color of rose gold, and the box has a piano finish. The cigar is made with Nicaraguan filler and binder and a high-priming wrapper leaf from Mexico’s San Andrés Valley. There’s but one size in this brand, a box-pressed Toro measuring 6 1/2 inches by 52 ring gauge, and they are packed 10 to the box. Only four cigar rollers make Conviction at Patel’s Tavicusa factory in Nicaragua. Shipping should take place around November, perhaps as early as October. The initial batch is 5,000 boxes, but there should be more. “I’m not saying it’s a one-and-done,” says Patel. Read more.
El Septimo Zaya Collection Kolosso Amethyst: $110
Details are slim on these Costa Rican cigars made by El Septimo. The company doesn’t want to disclose much about its proprietary tobacco process, but does say that the leaves in the Zaya Collection are aged anywhere from seven to 15 years. The large ring gauge of this 6-by-60 allows for a greater variety of different tobacco types, including its Cuban-seed Costa Rican wrapper and blend of varietals from Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.
Davidoff Royal Release Salomones: $115
All Davidoffs are expensive, but the Royal Release line is several times as pricey as most normal cigars. The company says the Royal Release is the product of “the best seeds” grown in “the best soils” and takes 10 years from seed to cigar. There are two sizes in the line, a Robusto (which is $95 per cigar) and this shapely Salomone, which sells for even more. It’s a big smoke, 8 1/4 inches long by 57 ring gauge. Read more.
Cohiba Spectre 2022: $130
The Cohiba brand has become synonymous with high, luxury pricing, regardless of where they are made. General Cigar, producers of the non-Cuban version of Cohiba, recently announced it was expanding the brand with the Cohiba Spectre 2022. It’s made with a well-aged Brazilian wrapper and it comes in a box with working hydraulics, but the real attention-getter here is the suggested retail price of $130 per cigar, making it the most expensive non-Cuban Cohiba produced so far. The new smokes are scheduled to come out soon. Read more.
La Flor Dominicana The Golden Bull: $100 or $200 (varies)
Unlike the other cigars on this list, this smoke has no suggested retail price. When La Flor Dominicana created a much smaller version of its award-winning Andalusian Bull blend, it made them available only to winners of an NFT auction. There were seven NFTs auctioned off, which went for $78,000 to $98,000 each. Winning gave the buyer the ability to order the cigars and sell them at whatever price they wish. We’ve seen them for as little as $60 per cigar, but $100 or even $200 is more common. The seven who secured rights can buy up to 70 per month, and no more, so this is extremely limited in production. Read more.
Cohiba Behikes: $200 And Up
Cohiba Behikes were always pricey smokes, selling for north of $100 each in Canada. When they first came out more than a decade ago, they could be found for as low as $30 each in low-tax markets such as Cuba. No longer. In the summer of 2022, Cuba’s Habanos S.A. normalized prices on its cigars, pegging pricing of brands such as Cohiba and Trinidad to the Hong Kong standard. That pushed Behike pricing far north of $100 per cigar, and a new price hike has made those cigars cost even more. Nowadays, if you can find one, the Cohiba Behike BHK 52 (the smallest cigar in the Behike trio) will cost you roughly $200, while the largest (the Behike BHK 56) sells for nearly $300.
Cohiba Siglo de Oro: $250
Cigars with a Chinese New Year theme tend to be pricey collectors’ items, but the newest zodiac-inspired Cohiba took it to a new level this year with the announcement of the Cohiba Siglo de Oro. The cigars are short robustos, a mere 4 1/2 inches long with a plump 54 ring gauge, but they have eye-popping prices of $250 per cigar. Each box has an NFC chip, to help with authentication. Read more.
Daniel Marshall 24KT Golden Cigar: $290
People have been known to eat gold leaf in pricey desserts and even drink it in certain spirits—but would you smoke it? The most expensive cigar from humidor maker Daniel Marshall is made precisely that way. It begins as a torpedo made by the Fuentes, then Marshall himself applies 24-karat gold leaf by hand to every inch of the cigar, save for the foot. The gilded smokes come in individual coffins. It’s not something we rate, but a cigar that stands out, to say the least. Read more.
A Golden Oliva: $300
The Roaring 20s were a time when people lived like every day was their last. Oliva Cigar Co.’s summer 2023 release of The Oliva Serie V Roaring Twenties Super Limited Edition brings the cigar world a $300 smoke that’s partially covered in gold foil—which you can actually smoke. The portly perfecto measures 6 inches long by 60 ring gauge, and is rolled in Nicaragua, the cigars are made entirely of Nicaraguan tobacco save for the wrapper, which is from Ecuador. They come in striking boxes of 10, and production will be limited to 300 boxes, 200 allocated for the United States. The bottom half or so is coated with Florentine gold foil, made in conjunction with Daniel Marshall. Read more.
Cohiba 55 Aniversario: $300…And More
We knew the Cohiba 55 Aniversario Edición Limitada 2021 was going to have a big price tag, but the release price of $300 (a little more in some markets, such as Switzerland) was eye opening. That big price isn’t slowing down sales of the celebratory smoke—retailers can’t keep them in stock. And it’s a fine cigar, too, Cigar Aficionado’s No. 17 Cigar of the Year, with a score of 95 points. Read more.
Davidoff Oro Blanco: $600
The name means “white gold,” and buying an entire box of these Dominican cigars is more expensive than investing in an ounce of real gold. The Davidoff Oro Blanco came out in 2014–back then it was only $500 per cigar. Or, as we put it at the time, one of those smokes was more expensive than all of the cigars in two of our rating categories in Cigar Aficionado magazine combined. The tobaccos are purportedly from a 2002 crop and represent the very best of Davidoff’s inventories. It’s been nine years since the debut, and the cigars have gone up $100 each in price, to $600 per cigar. Read more.
Gurhka His Majesty Reserve: $750 Plus
Flavored cigars aren’t our thing, and we don’t rate them at Cigar Aficionado, but there are people who pay incredible amounts for this infused Gurkha, which comes in a glass tube and is finished with green wax. So why the high price? It’s said to be made with a bottle of pricey Remy Martin Louis XIII Cognac.
Cohiba Ideales: Up To $827
Cohibas have never been cheap, but each new one seems to stretch the limits of what can be charged for a single smoke. The new Cuban Cohiba Ideales, a limited-edition cigar that’s part of a series called the Colección Habanos, set new pricing standards upon its August release. It went on sale for $500 in the duty-free store in Beirut, had a suggested retail price of £400 pounds ($511) in the United Kingdom, and the Casa del Habano in Teddington, England, is selling it for £650 ($827). While all the talk so far has been about the price, this Cohiba is a substantial smoke, measuring 6 5/8 inches by 56 ring gauge. The box, like other releases in the Coleccíon Habanos line, looks like a book, each containing 20 cigars. It is meant for sale only in Casa del Habano stores, and no matter the price there just won’t be very many, as the cigars are limited to 3,000 boxes (60,000 cigars.) Read more.
Updated: August 2023
