For collectors and private clients
What a box is worth is not written on the box.
You want to know what your collection is actually worth before you decide anything about it. A price found on the internet is of little help. Authenticity, condition, storage and provenance all play a part, often more than the name on the box.
You receive a written expert report with reasons. Not an offer to buy: I do not buy anything and I do not broker anything.
When a valuation helps
The reasons vary. What they have in common is that a decision is pending and there is no reliable basis for it.
- You have inherited
- There are boxes in the estate, and nobody in the family knows what is in them, whether they are still sound and whether they have any value. To divide an estate you need a figure that is not a guess.
- You want to sell
- Before you talk to a buyer, you want to know what your collection is worth. And to hear it from someone who is not trying to buy it from you.
- You want to insure
- Your insurer asks for the value, and you do not want to give them a figure you estimated yourself.
- Something has turned up
- There is a box in the cellar or the attic and nobody knows where it came from any more. Before every further question comes the one about what is actually in it.
- A gift or a holiday purchase
- You were given cigars or bought them on holiday and you are unsure whether they are genuine and what they are worth. I examine them neutrally and record the result in writing, also when items turn out to be counterfeit. You or your legal representative can submit that documentation to an authority.
- A suspected counterfeit
- An item was strikingly cheap, or the cigar band, the stamps and the box do not match each other. I examine the features one by one, including for a purchase made over the internet, and record what speaks for and what speaks against authenticity.
Four criteria
What I examine
An expert report is never based on a single observation. Only the interplay of these criteria produces a statement on authenticity and value that is reasoned well enough to withstand scrutiny and that you can submit in proceedings. How a court assesses a privately commissioned report that has been submitted is for the court to decide.
Authenticity and provenance
I examine cigar bands, serial numbers, holograms and stamps individually and against one another. Added to that are the box material, the workmanship and the packaging details, measured against the manufacturer's standards, historical as well as current. This is the decisive part of every counterfeit examination.
Condition and storage
Whether storage has preserved the condition or harmed it, in particular the relative humidity of about 65 to 72 per cent. On the cigar itself I look at breaks, cracks, stains, traces of the tobacco beetle and mould. A fine white film is not automatically mould: it can also be what is known as plume. Part of this does not run through the eye: smell and feel are part of it, and where a piece may be opened for that purpose, taste as well. Condition feeds directly into the replacement value.
Provenance and history
Where an item comes from and where it was first bought allows conclusions about how likely a counterfeit is. For limited or older series I also check whether the stated year is correct. What you know yourself, receipts included, is taken into account. For collector value and for a legal clarification this is often the decisive point.
Market context
How available an item currently is, how sought after it is among collectors, and what comparable items in comparable condition have last achieved on the main collector markets. Completeness counts as well: a full, unopened box is a different matter from one that has been started. That is the basis for a value that matches the market. No forecast of future prices is connected with this.
Age alone is not value. What matters is how a cigar has spent the years.
An example
Why photographs are only a beginning
The wrapper is the first thing you see, and its colour is already a statement in itself. In the trade it is sorted into grades. The colour reveals something about how much sun the leaf received, how long it was fermented and which variety of tobacco it comes from. Sorting runs to as many as sixty colour grades; the scale shows the main categories.
But it does not say everything: a dark cigar is not automatically the stronger one and a light one not the milder. About authenticity and value the colour says very little. Security features matter far more there, which is why an assessment based on photographs is often only a provisional one.
The colour fields are only an approximation: a wrapper in the hand always looks different from a block of colour on a screen.
One more example
What an examination really turns on
Cuban boxes carry a seal that combines several features in one small piece of paper. It is a good example of how an authentication actually works: not on one feature, but on all of them together, and none of them can be judged reliably from a phone photograph.
- The paper
- A distinctive, slightly fibrous paper tone with fine security fibres running through it.
- The barcode
- Every box carries a unique barcode, with the box number repeated below it in plain figures.
- The watermark
- Under UV light, features appear that are invisible in daylight, among them the Cuban coat of arms.
- The micro-cuts
- Fine punched cuts sit along the edges. Anyone trying to lift the seal intact tears the paper exactly there.
- The hologram strip
- A silver strip along the top that shows the coat of arms and the lettering depending on the viewing angle.
A single feature proves nothing. Only the combination leads to a finding, and what does not fit together says the most.
Two levels
Brief assessment or full expert report
How far an examination goes depends on what you need the result for. There are two levels, and we settle beforehand which one fits your case.
Brief assessment
A focused assessment on the basis of photographs or a simplified examination. It helps you get your bearings on market value before a sale and with a first suspicion of a counterfeit. This form is an aid to a decision and not a complete documentation.
Full expert report
The fully documented appraisal: all criteria in writing, with reasons for each point, with photographs and with a valuation date. You need this form for insurers, for inheritance matters and wherever someone else has to be able to follow the findings. For it I look at the items myself, at your premises or, by arrangement, sent to me as insured post. I do not take cigars into safekeeping where proper payment of tax on them is not documented.
Types of value
Which value figure you need
Value is not simply value. Depending on what you need the expert report for, for an insurer, for a sale or for the division of an estate, a different figure is the right one. I give you the one that fits your purpose, and I state in the report which one it is.
Market value
The fair sale value currently achievable. This is the figure for buying and selling.
Replacement value
The price you would have to pay to acquire an equivalent item anew. For insurance questions this is usually the figure asked for. Whether your insurer accepts it as such is best clarified with them beforehand.
Where a seized or impounded consignment is concerned, valuation for customs purposes is a task of its own. It is described on the page for authorities.
Process
From the first message to the expert report
You describe what you have
Along with a few photographs: the closed box from all sides with the seal and the box bottom, the opened box and a single cigar close up.
I look at everything
For a first assessment, good photographs are often enough. For a sound assessment I look at the cigars myself: at your premises, or, by arrangement, sent to me as insured post.
You receive it in writing
With photographs, with reasons for each point examined and with a valuation date. I state the value as a range and not as a single figure.
What you hold in your hands at the end
You receive the result in writing, with photographs, with reasons for each point examined and with the valuation date of the appraisal. Part of that is naming the limits of the statement: what I was able to establish from the material submitted and what I was not.
I state the value as a range and not as a single figure. A single figure suggests a precision that does not exist with cigars.
On that basis you make your own decision, whether to sell, insure or keep, without having to rely on a feeling. I answer any questions you have about the report.
Costs
What an expert report costs
The requirements are too varied for a price list, from the photographic analysis of a single item to the fully documented appraisal of a large collection. Quoting a flat price would therefore not be honest.
The price follows the effort involved: whether photographs are enough or I examine the items on site, how demanding the authentication is in the individual case, and what you need the result for.
The first telephone call, in which we settle scope and costs, costs nothing and commits you to nothing. On that basis I give you a binding price in advance. If the effort later turns out to be considerably different, I tell you so before anything else is charged.
For context
What a valuation is not
Five things I would rather say before the engagement than after it.
- Not a report by a publicly appointed expert
- I am not publicly appointed and sworn under section 36 of the German Trade Regulation Act (Gewerbeordnung), and I do not use any such title. My reports are privately commissioned reports. You can submit them, and if a court or an authority appoints me in specific proceedings, the procedural law that applies there governs.
- No legal and no tax advice
- I establish facts. I do not give legal or tax advice; in Germany both are reserved for regulated professions. With questions about inheritance, tax, customs or resale, please turn to a lawyer or to a tax adviser.
- No assurance to third parties
- The report is written for you as the client. Anyone who receives it from you, a buyer or an insurer for example, gains no assurance of their own from me.
- Not an offer to buy
- I do not buy anything, I do not broker goods and I do not act as a middleman. A figure in my report is no assurance that you will also achieve it in a sale.
- Nothing I pass on
- What you tell me, the provenance of the cigars and the result do not go to third parties, I do not name you as a reference and I do not show your items to anyone. Two limits that nobody can rule out I state to you openly.
For context: cigars are tobacco products. I examine authenticity, condition, storage and value. I do not encourage anyone to smoke, I make no statements about health and I play nothing down. Anyone who comes to me already has cigars to deal with, as a collector, as an heir or because there is a box in an estate.
Describe to me what you have
A short description is enough, photographs help. I tell you whether I can help, what I need for it and what it costs.
- Telephone
- +49 176 20150975
- info (at) zigarrenexpertise.com