How to Buy Cigars and Cigar Accessories Online

Is it legal to buy cigars online?

Yes. If you are 21 or older you can buy cigars online and have them shipped to you, the same way you would buy them over a counter. The age is 21 everywhere in the country, and a proper shop will check it rather than take your word for it.

Cigars are not cigarettes

People hear that cigarettes cannot be mailed and assume the same is true of cigars. It is not. Premium cigars are treated differently, they can be shipped to your home, and there is no special paperwork on your side. You place the order, we send it, someone signs for it.

Someone 21 or older signs for every delivery

This is true for every order we send, anywhere in the country. Cigars are not left on a porch and they are not dropped in a mailbox. The driver hands the package to a person, and that person has to be 21 or older and willing to sign for it.

It is the same check you would get at a counter, just moved to your front door. The box is marked so the driver knows to ask.

So a cigar delivery is never left on a porch. Plan for an adult to be at the address, or send the order to a workplace or somewhere an adult will be. It is the one piece of friction in the whole process, and it is also the clearest sign that the company you bought from is operating properly.

State rules on shipping

A few states have their own rules about tobacco arriving by mail, and those rules change now and then. You do not need to keep track of any of it. If there is a problem with your address, it shows up at checkout before you pay.

What happens after you click order

Less happens than people imagine. Six steps, and after you pay only one of them involves you at all.

1. Age confirmation at checkout. You confirm you are 21 or older and your details are verified. No verification, no order.
2. The cigars are pulled from humidified storage. Premium cigars live at a controlled humidity before they are packed, not on an open shelf.
3. Packing. Cigars are packed to hold their condition in transit. Boxes travel better than loose sticks, which is one reason box and multi pack prices are usually the better buy.
4. The box is marked. A notice goes on the outside so the driver knows an adult has to sign for it.
5. Shipping. Ground service anywhere in the country. Shipping is free on orders of $250 or more, and smaller orders are priced at checkout.
6. Delivery, with a signature. An adult 21 or older signs. The package is never left unattended.

That is the whole process. It is less work than a drive across town, and unlike a drive it does not depend on what happens to be in the case that afternoon.

What to order first

If this is your first order from a retailer you have not bought from before, the sensible move is a sampler or a multi pack rather than a single stick or a full box. You get several blends for the price of a small night out, you learn what the company's packing and shipping are actually like, and you end up with a much better idea of what to buy in quantity next time. It is also how most of our customers start.

Three good first orders

Each of these gives you more than one blend in a single package, so one order teaches you several things at once.

Browse All Cigar Samplers

How to shop a catalog instead of a display case

A catalog is a different problem from a display case, and the mistake people make is browsing it the same way. In a shop you scan a shelf and pick what looks right. Online, scanning is the slow way to do it, because there is no end to the shelf. Filtering is the fast way.

Start from the constraint you actually have rather than the brand you half remember. There are four of them, and any one narrows the field enormously.

• How long you have. A robusto is roughly an hour, a toro or gordo longer. Buy the size that fits the evening, not the one with the best name.
• How strong you want it. Mild, medium and full are the widest cut you can make in one click, and they matter more to whether you enjoy a cigar than the country it came from.
• The wrapper. Connecticut for cream and cedar, maduro for coffee and cocoa, habano for pepper and spice. It is the single biggest influence on what you taste.
• What you are drinking. A cigar that works with coffee is not always the one that works with a heavy pour.

Our Cigar Finder is built to do this in a few clicks, by size, strength, wrapper and origin. Once you have a shortlist, check the box variant on the product page before you buy the single, because that is where the per stick price drops.

Three worth filtering down to

Each of these comes as a single stick and as a box, so you can try one and then buy the quantity that makes sense.

All three come from the deepest part of our humidor. We hold more than 150 El Septimo products, alongside lines from Davidoff, Oliva, Ashton, Plasencia, Camacho, Perdomo, La Aurora, Cohiba and Bolivar. If you have ever asked for a particular size in a particular wrapper and been told it can be ordered in, filtering is that same conversation, finished in about a minute.

How to compare prices properly

Comparing an online price to a shop price is easy to get wrong, because the two numbers usually are not measuring the same thing. Four things to line up before you decide.

Compare per stick, not per package

A box, a bundle and a five pack all have different unit economics. Divide the price by the number of cigars and compare that figure. A box almost always comes out ahead of the same cigar bought one at a time, which is why we link the box or the multi pack wherever one exists.

Count the shipping

A slightly higher unit price with free shipping often beats a lower one with a delivery charge attached. Our ground shipping is free at $250 and up, so on a box order the shipping question usually answers itself. On a two stick order it does not, and that is worth knowing before you compare.

Remember that tobacco tax is local

Tobacco tax is set locally, so the same cigar can come out at a different final price in two different states. A low price on a site in another state is not always the bargain it looks like, and sometimes it is the opposite.

Ask what condition the cigar is in

Price per stick means very little if the cigar has been sitting dry. A cigar that has been held at a proper humidity is the one worth paying for, and it is the part of the comparison that never shows up in the number.

How to tell a serious cigar retailer from a reseller

This is the part of buying online that actually deserves your attention. Anyone can build a storefront. Far fewer companies can show you what sits behind it. Six things to look for, in the order they matter.

• Licenses you can actually see. A real cigar shop is licensed, and it should be willing to show you. Ours are published with the numbers and the documents on our licenses page. Most sellers will not show you theirs, and that tells you something.
• A real address and a phone number that a person answers. Ours is 21900 Burbank Blvd UNIT 265, Woodland Hills, CA 91367, and the number is 1 818-719-9885, Monday to Friday, 9:30 am to 5:30 pm.
• Humidified storage, described plainly. A retailer who takes storage seriously will tell you how the cigars are held before they are packed.
• Age verification that is visibly enforced. If a site lets you buy tobacco without an age check, it is not following the law, and that carelessness rarely stops there.
• A return policy written in normal language, and people behind it. Ours is published in plain terms, and more to the point there is a phone number and an inbox where a person reads what you send. See below.
• Product pages that say something a manufacturer's catalog does not. Anyone can copy a blend description. Notes on how something actually smokes come from people who have smoked it.

None of that is complicated. It is the difference between a shop that is in this for the long run and a website that sells cigars until one day it does not.

If something is not right, tell us

This is the part that decides whether anyone buys from a company twice, so we will be direct about it. If an order arrives wrong, damaged or not what you expected, email info@cigarinc.com or call 1 818-719-9885 and a person will look at it. Not a form that disappears, not a ticket number. We have been selling cigars in Los Angeles for years and we would rather sort out a problem than win an argument about it.

The formal terms sit alongside that, and we publish them rather than burying them. Eligible unopened and unused items in their original packaging can be returned within 14 days of purchase, at our discretion, with a 15 percent restocking fee. Engraved, personalized, customized, pre order and special order items are final sale, because they are made or sourced for one customer. Contact us before sending anything back so we can authorize it.

Buying cigar accessories online

Accessories are the category where buying online is most clearly better, and it is the one people put off. A local case might carry a handful of cigar cutters and two or three lighters. Online you can compare more than a hundred of them by blade type, opening size and material in one sitting, which matters because a cutter that is too small for a 60 ring gauge cigar is not a bargain at any price.

Three things make a real difference to how a cigar smokes, and all three travel well by post. A clean cut, a steady flame from a torch or soft flame lighter, and somewhere for the cigars to live once they arrive. The full range sits in our cigar accessories collection.

The three that earn their place first

One of each, chosen because they cover the whole job rather than one part of it.

Accessories are also the easiest gift to buy online with confidence, because unlike a cigar they do not depend on the recipient's taste in wrapper. Our guide to luxury gifts for cigar lovers works through that by budget.

What to do when the box arrives

Open the package the day it lands and give the cigars somewhere stable to sit. Premium cigars are an agricultural product, and they respond to the room they are kept in. A humidor, a sealed container with a humidity source, or even a travel case will hold them properly for a while. An open drawer will not.

If a cigar has travelled in cold weather, let it come back to room temperature in its packaging before you handle it. Beyond that there is nothing to do, and the fuller version of the answer is in our guides on keeping cigars fresh and storing cigars without a humidor.

Same evening delivery in Los Angeles

If you are in Los Angeles, there is a third option that sits between ordering online and driving to a shop. We handle local delivery ourselves from Woodland Hills, across the San Fernando Valley, the Westside, the Conejo Valley and the Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena areas. Deliveries begin after 5:00 pm, the minimum order is $100, and an adult 21 or older has to be at the address with valid government issued identification to receive it.

The ZIP codes we cover and the full details are on our local delivery page. Outside that area, standard shipping options appear automatically at checkout.

Online or in person, side by side

Both have their moments. This is the honest version.

The practical answer for most people is both. Buy the boxes and the accessories online where the range and the per stick price are better, and keep the shop for the afternoons when the point is the visit rather than the purchase.

The bottom line

Buying cigars online is legal for adults 21 and over, it is not governed by the cigarette shipping rules people assume apply to it, and the only real obligation on your side is that someone 21 or older is there to sign. What you get in exchange is the entire catalog instead of one display case, a per stick price you can actually check, and accessories chosen by specification rather than by what happened to be in stock.

The one decision that matters is who you buy from. Look for published licenses, a real address, humidified storage and a return policy written in plain language, and the rest of it takes care of itself.

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