Birthday Cigars: What to Give at 30, 40, 50 and 60, and What to Hand Out at the Party

Birthday cigars are the easiest gift in this world to get right, because the birthday itself does half the choosing. A thirtieth wants a first proper box. A fortieth wants the humidor he keeps meaning to buy. A fiftieth wants a box that gets opened in front of people, and a sixtieth wants the one object he will still have at seventy. Our starting point for every one of them is the El Septimo collection, because we carry it deeper than any other house and can always match a box to the man, and the rest of this guide fills in the object and the party.

What we see across our own birthday orders is that they arrive in two shapes. The first is a single box with a card, bought by a wife, a partner, a daughter or a friend who knows he smokes and does not know much more. The second is the hand-out: twenty or twenty-five cigars for the party itself, bought by the birthday man or whoever is hosting him. The two want different cigars, so we have given each its own section below.

Birthday cigars by decade: the short answer

Birthday	Our pick	Why it fits	Price today
30th	AVO Classic No. 2 Tubos, box of 20	A first proper box, mild to medium, every cigar in its own tube so it keeps without a humidor.	$254.50
30th, the companion	El Septimo Emperor Yao guillotine cutter	The first cutter he did not buy for himself, gold finish, artwork sealed under coating.	$170.00
40th	El Septimo Brown Marble Humidor, Trilogy Collection	The humidor he has been meaning to buy for ten years, finished to sit in the open rather than in a cupboard.	$408.00
40th, to fill it	El Septimo Empress Sheba Maduro Gordo, box of 20	Dark, oily, medium to full, from El Septimo's best-selling Emperor Collection, in three box colors.	$560.00
50th	El Septimo Excepcion Esmeralda, box of 20	A Zaya Collection gordo with a stone for a name and a box that is a pleasure to open at the table.	$960.00
50th, the lighter	El Septimo Emperor Vartan triple torch lighter	Three jets for the terrace, the gold finish to match the cutter, an object that gets noticed.	$212.50
60th and beyond	El Septimo Mirifico Sapphire, box of 10	The long Zaya Collection format for slow evenings, ten cigars that each mark an occasion of their own.	$1,060.00
60th, the object	S.T. Dupont Line 2 Cling 1872, black	The lighter known by its sound, refillable and serviceable, the piece he keeps for the rest of his life.	$1,695.00
The party	El Septimo Short Dream Topaz, box of 20	A 4 x 60 short gordo built for a shorter session, so guests finish before the cake, not after.	$560.00

30th: the first box that is actually his

At thirty most men who enjoy a cigar have never owned a full box of anything. They have bought singles, been handed one at a wedding, kept two in a drawer. The thirtieth birthday gift is the first box with his name on the card, and the right box is one he can keep without a humidor, because he almost certainly does not own one yet. That is why our pick is the AVO Classic No. 2 Tubos, box of 20: a 6 x 50 Toro, Ecuadorian Connecticut over Dominican leaf, mild to medium, and every cigar sealed in its own aluminum tube. A tube keeps the cigar as it left the factory for weeks on a shelf, which is exactly the forgiveness a first box needs.

Our own note on it: it opens soft and creamy, cedar and a little toasted almond, with the pepper kept well in the background, and it never pushes. The Toro length gives the middle third room to round out into warm bread and hay, and the last third adds a quiet sweetness. It is an unhurried hour, and it is the cigar we hand to someone who tells us they like a cigar but do not want to be knocked flat by one. If you want to be sure of the strength before you commit to twenty, our Cigar Finder narrows the whole shop to a short list in four questions.

The companion gift at thirty is a cutter, because the man who has never owned a box has never owned a good cutter either. The El Septimo Emperor Yao guillotine cutter is a double-bladed guillotine in stainless steel, electroplated in gold, with the Yao artwork micro-printed and sealed under a protective coating so it does not wear. It is the piece people pick up off our counter, and at $170.00 it turns a box into a complete gift. The wider range is in our cigar cutters collection.

The decade picks, with live prices. Choose the box variant on the product page; every piece is in stock and can be gift boxed.

40th birthday cigars: the humidor he never bought, and the box to fill it

By forty the cigars have become a habit with a shape to it: a Friday, a round of golf, the hour after the children are asleep. What he does not have, almost every time, is somewhere proper to keep them. What we see across our own customers is that a humidor is bought as a gift far more often than for oneself, which makes the fortieth the natural year to give one. Our pick is the El Septimo Brown Marble Humidor from the Trilogy Collection, a handcrafted desktop piece with a brown marble finish and humidity control built in. We like it for a fortieth specifically because it is finished to sit in the open, on a desk or a sideboard, rather than in a cupboard; a humidor that is seen gets used. If he already owns one, or keeps a larger collection, our guide to choosing between a desktop and an electric humidor walks through the sizes, and the full range is in our humidors collection.

A humidor given empty is half a gift, so fill it. The El Septimo Empress Sheba Maduro Gordo, box of 20 comes from El Septimo's best-selling Emperor Collection, and it is the box we reach for first when someone asks us for a fortieth. It is a 6 x 60, Costa Rican, medium to full, with a dark oily wrapper, white pepper up front and a rich aged character underneath, and it burns evenly despite how densely it is filled. The box comes in white, light blue or light purple, so you can pick the one that suits the room it will live in. Twenty of them in a new humidor is a fortieth that gets talked about.

50th birthday cigars: the box that gets opened in front of people

Fifty is the birthday with a dinner attached. There will be a table, there will be people who know him, and at some point the box will come out. That changes what the box has to be: it has to be a pleasure to open in company, and the cigar inside has to be the one he reaches for first, not the one he saves for later. The El Septimo Excepcion Esmeralda, box of 20 is that box. It is a 5 x 60 gordo from the Zaya Collection, El Septimo's line of cigars named for stones, medium to full, with a silky Maduro wrapper. Our note on it runs to cedar, walnut and molasses, lifted by milk chocolate and orange zest, with leather and pink peppercorn building through the middle. It is a cigar that balances strength with elegance, which is a reasonable description of the man you are buying it for.

If the budget wants a step down without losing the stone, the same cigar comes as an acrylic box of ten at $480.00. If it wants a step up, we have written about what the luxury houses worth the price each do best, and about how to read a cigar price ladder so the box you choose sits where you mean it to.

The object for a fiftieth is the lighter, and for a man who smokes on a terrace or a course it has to be a torch. The El Septimo Emperor Vartan triple torch lighter puts three jets behind the same gold PVD finish and micro-printed artwork as the Yao cutter, so the two make a matched pair across a decade of birthdays. For the man who travels, the S.T. Dupont Défi Extreme in matte black is the Paris house's lighter built for wind, with a robust body and a jet flame, and like every S.T. Dupont it is refillable and serviceable rather than replaced. Our cutter and lighter guide explains why a torch and a soft flame are different gifts for different men.

60th birthday gift for men: the one he keeps for the rest of his life

At sixty the gift stops being about more cigars and starts being about the right ones, and about an object that outlasts the occasion. For the cigars, we go long. The El Septimo Mirifico Sapphire, box of 10 is a 6¾ x 58 from the Zaya Collection built for slow, unhurried sessions: thick creamy smoke, sweet marzipan and vanilla, dark cocoa, toasted nuts, cedar and a dried-fruit sweetness that lingers on a long finish. Ten of them is the right number. Each one is an evening in itself, and a man of sixty would rather have ten evenings he remembers than twenty he does not.

For the object, there is one answer. The S.T. Dupont Line 2 Cling 1872 in black is the lighter people recognize by ear, from the clear sound of the cap as it opens, and this piece carries the Monogram 1872 decor, a tribute to the year the Paris maison was founded. It is brass, it is refillable, it can be serviced for decades, and it arrives in S.T. Dupont presentation packaging. We are an authorized S.T. Dupont retailer, and the S.T. Dupont collection we carry runs from the Minijet to Le Grand, so if he already owns a Line 2 we can find the piece he does not. For milestones past sixty, and for the retirement that often arrives alongside them, our guide to cigars for a retirement gift takes the aged and vintage-dated route; this page stays with the birthday.

The birthday party: what to hand out, and how many

The second shape of birthday order is the hand-out, and it wants a different cigar from the box with the card. A party cigar has to be good enough to be remembered, short enough to finish before the evening moves on, and generous enough in ring gauge to feel like a gift in the hand. The El Septimo Short Dream Topaz, box of 20 is the one we recommend most. It is a 4 x 60 short gordo, Costa Rican, medium to full, rich and roasted with a natural sweetness, and it concentrates the flavor into a shorter session so your guests are not standing in the garden with half a cigar when the cake comes out. For a bigger party it comes as a bundle of 25. On quantity, our rule from years of these orders is simple: count the adults who will actually smoke, add a quarter, and round up to the box. Twenty covers most dinners; twenty-five covers a house party. Our guide to how long a cigar lasts by size will help you time it.

The man carrying the birthday cigars needs somewhere to carry them. The El Septimo crocodile-embossed 3-cigar travel case holds three in structured leather, in orange, emerald green or taupe, and slips into a jacket; it is the gift for the friend who is doing the handing out rather than the receiving. More cases, tubes and travel humidors are in our travel cases and tubes collection, and if you would rather give a complete set in one box, our cigar gift sets put a cutter, a lighter and an ashtray or a case together so nothing has to be assembled.

The party cigar and the objects, with live prices. Every piece is in stock today.

When you do not know what he smokes

This is the question we are asked most by the people buying the box with the card, and the honest answer is that you have three safe routes. The first is to give the accessory rather than the cigars: the Yao cutter, the Vartan lighter or the travel case is right for anyone who smokes a cigar, whatever he smokes. The second is to give a box from the El Septimo collection and let us help you choose it, because with more than a hundred El Septimo listings live on our site today and dozens of lines available by the box, there is a line for every strength and every budget, and we can match it to what you can tell us about him. The third is to call us. We do this by phone every week, and a two-minute conversation about whether he likes his coffee black usually settles it.

Whatever the route, cigars themselves go only to an adult you know enjoys them. Everything on this page is sold to adults 21 and over, and an adult signature is required on delivery. For the wider question of what to give a man who could buy any of this himself, our guide to luxury gifts for men, chosen by the man rather than the price is the companion to this one.

The card, the box and the name on it

A birthday gift is judged in the first ten seconds, before anything is cut or lit. Every piece on this page can be gift boxed by us, and every box can go out with a handwritten card in your words rather than ours. Personalized designs and custom messages are available where offered; the details are on our customization page, and we will tell you plainly which pieces take a name cleanly and which are better left as the maker finished them. If the birthday is close, tell us the date you need it in hand and we will confirm stock and timing before anything is charged. Our guide to cigar gift sets, and what to buy for someone who already has the cigars, covers the presentation question in more depth.

Live prices from the El Septimo collection. Choose the box variant on each product page.

The short version

Let the number choose. Thirty: the AVO Classic No. 2 Tubos by the twenty, with the Emperor Yao cutter. Forty: the Brown Marble humidor, filled with Empress Sheba. Fifty: Excepcion Esmeralda by the twenty, with the Vartan torch. Sixty and beyond: Mirifico Sapphire by the ten, and the S.T. Dupont Line 2 Cling 1872. For the party, Short Dream Topaz, counted honestly and rounded up to the box. Write the card yourself, and give us the date.