PUNCH
A middle-ages wife-beater is a hit as a Cuban cigar and 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 under construc-tion with lots more to come. Come get an early look. <VISIT>
Cigar History Museum
The 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., Canada and Cuba.
HOME PAGE
The cigar box as “Perfect Package” is the lead into this text. most perfect man-made package.
Between 1862 and 1962, the folks who made and sold cigars were on the cutting edge of adverttising created nearly every adver-tising 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 gave birth to 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, goats, drunks, spiders, wasps, rattle snakes, funerals 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 1862 and 1962, two million brands of cigars displayed six hundred billion domestic and clear Havana cigars for sale.
The industry made and 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.
Central California
2012
FEATURE
EXHIBITS
Space Reserved
for coming Exhibit
Identification guide
Expanded details
Most complete list
ever published
Good for you?
Give-away phenom
and things not cigar
NEW
Open
Under Construction
IN PROGRESS
Reader’s Questions
Coming soon?
Surprise
Coming soon
Surprise II
Coming later
AND
211
MORE EXHIBITS
Overview of what’s here
Tales previously untold
Cigar_Box_History
12 illustrated Exhibits
And they were battles
By hand & machine
The fun and frolic
Labels, labels, labels
Cigar Advertising
Scheduled 2012
A good place to start
Endless
Since 1870
Cardboard, plastic, etc.
Since 1878
It’s easy
Girlie pix to automobiles
A sad wonderful story
Bigger than you think
An overview, plus...
What they really mean
Cutters, lighters, more
Books & magazines
Tony, visiting, selling to
SPECIAL EXHIBITS
Here’s how I did it
Other things not boxes
Q & A
Visitor questions answered
Boxes. photos, catalogs +
Links to other sites
What is it ?
Early years 1725 - 1875
Label years 1870 - 1920
Junior cigar fiends
Left to me in his will
Such clever people
Sample of what’s available
Sample of what’s available
Something
Got
Brief Introduction to
Cigar Boxes 1762-1962
U.S. Cigar Industry Numbers 1862-1962:
250,000 cigar factories;
100 label printers;
1,000 box makers;
2,000,000 brands of cigar
10,000,000 wholesalers and retailers;
200,000,000 cigar boxes.
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? <VISIT>
FULL BOXES
A century of how cigars were packed
in boxes: plain, banded, tissue, glass, aluminum,
foiled & more. <VISIT>
BOXES FOR
SALE
TAX WARS
What happened when Congress passed the first tax in 45 years even tho no one in the government knew how to write, let alone administer, a tax law? Hampered they were by trying to find 1,000 one-man cigar factories scattered over a dozen states...on horseback. <VISIT>
