I imagine with all the money they spend traveling, sampling cigars, shipping cigars, etc. -- plus the fact that they sell only "small quantities" when they do find some -- that the markup on those small quantities would have to be enormous to make it a viable business.

They might even be getting those cigars for free, simply for removing them from the "warehouses" in which they find 'em.

Because let's face it, if they're really high-quality cigars that are being stored in manufacturers' warehouses, why wouldn't those just be sold as the normal lines they were intended for? It just doesn't make sense to me.

I don't buy the concept of "lost" cigars, whether it's in the advertising copy of a CI catalog or from these folks. A cigar warehouse is not like someone's attic. There aren't boxes of cigars accidentally left under a collection of old Life magazines.

And even if it were, why would some dude wandering in off the street be able to find these "lost" cigars when the proprietors of the company themselves couldn't? And why would the company then sell these valuable "lost" cigars to some guy when they could sell them through their normal distribution outlets?

Stories about "finding" a big batch of "lost" cigars just seem like BS to me.