What's in YOUR humidor? Or as importantly, the humidors of your local cigar shop. Reports that more than 3 million counterfeit cigars make their way into the humidors of unwitting smokers and even retailers in the United States each year give cause for caution. The purchase of an authentic product - the product YOU want - depends largely on your eye and knowledge, and of course your confidence in the cigar shop of your choice.
Do some snooping around the shop and chat with the owner; this can give you a good gut-level feeling about whether or not your cigar guy is up to snuff. Is his expertise solid? Talk to friends and read-up a bit to develop your own knowledge base.
The continuing infusion of counterfeit bands into the cigar market compounds the issue. Some of the work of counterfeiters is pretty shoddy and you can recognize a fake right off the bat. They use inferior paper stock, a lesser degree of embossing, along with being unable to reproduce the intricate details of a top-quality band; once you have an eye for this, you'll see that the cigarmakers are using complex band designs to thwart counterfeiters. An example of this is the gold dust on a Fuente Fuente OpusX band.
Nonetheless, some miscreants of society use stolen (authentic, but stolen) bands on fake cigars. Even the streets of Havana are known to be thick with black market smokes and bands.
Ultimately, the cigar itself is the only true test of its authenticity, but the folks at Cigar Aficionado have a handy online Counterfeit Gallery to help you spot the authenticity-challenged cigar.
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