Cigar History Museum History of cigars, cigar boxes, cigar labels, cigar making, cigar cutters, cigar premiums, cigar tools, cigar promotions, and other things cigar in the U.S. and around the world. HOME PAGE

OLD VIRGINIA CHEROOTS

The story of a classic low price brand that lasted for 55 years under 5 owners.

PLUS exclusive info about these boxes for Ebay sellers. <VISIT>

PUNCH

An Italian wife-beater from the middle-ages was a popular English puppet and a hit as a Cuban cigar that generates seemingly endless knock-offs. <VISIT>

CONDITION - CONDITION - CONDITION

Condition is important in determining the value of any historic object. Cigar boxes are no exception. The exhibit is open while under construction with lots more coming. You can get an early look. <VISIT>

CIGAR LEAF ART

From Cuba comes this meticulous craft. Little is known about the artists who so painstakingly punched tobacco from between the leaf’s veins. <VISIT>

Collection is for sale.

EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN

How did the cigar industry weigh in during the 1870s and 1880s? The answer may surprise you. <VISIT>

FULL BOXES

A century of how cigars were packed in boxes: plain, banded, aluminum, glass,

tissue, foiled & more. <VISIT>

BOXES FOR

SALE

TAX WARS

What happened when Congress passed the first tax in 45 years even tho no one knew how to write a tax law, or enforce one?

Government agents were required to find 1,000 tiny cigar factories scattered over a dozen states...on horseback...in winter. <VISIT>

Cigar History Museum

History of cigars, cigar boxes, cigar labels, cigar making,

cigar cutters, cigar premiums, cigar tools, cigar promotions,

and other things cigar in the U.S. and around the world.

HOME PAGE

Between 1762 and 1962, the folks who made and sold cigars were on the cutting edge of advertising. They created nearly every advertising image, gimmick and theme used today. These pioneers led the way into the world of modern advertising.

No package was used in more ways, in so many shapes and sizes, with so many images, than a cigar box. In the art of using the package to attract the customer’s eye, the cigar industry did it earlier, better and more adventurously than anyone. The cigar industry created point-of-sale advertising.

Like all pioneers, not all their ideas were good ones.

The men and women who selected a brand name or chose an image worked without precedents, polls or web-sites to warn them not to decorate their boxes with skunks, drunks, spiders, snakes and Satan to sell cigars.

So they did.

Marketers of other products watched with interest ... and learned that pretty girls, dogs, cute kids, cute girls, sports, celebrities, cute women celebrities, good health, healthy girls, good times, wealth and good looking women were much more popular with customers.

In the U.S. cigar industry, experimenting with brands was a way of life. Lessons were never-ending. Cigar companies, salesmen, wholesalers, retailers and even customers ... everyone created brand names, chose pictures, selected the style of box. It was “Advertising Anarchy”® at its ultimate.

Between 1762 and 1962, two million brands of cigars displayed six hundred billion domestic and clear Havana cigars made and sold in the U.S.

The “industry” that sold those billions was fragmented into tens of thousands of small clever entrepreneurs, advertising pioneers, innovative package designers, hard workers, progressive unionists, government regulators, counterfeiters and tax evaders.

It’s the greatest story ever NOT told.

This Cigar Museum is my way of sharing that story and the artifacts I’ve found.

I take full responsibility for errors of fact, omission or interpretation. If you think I’m wrong, misguided, or ill-informed, you might be right. Feel free to let me know.

Tony Hyman

Central California

2014