Tips to Spot a Fake Cuban Cigar

With a little ambition, I’d buy me little cabana in Ixtapa, Mexico overlooking the Pacific Ocean & amass a small fortune selling $2 Mexican made cigars as Cuban Cohibas for $40 a piece to unsuspecting tourists. All I would need is an above par poker face & a sub-par conscience...but alas, I have neither. Apparently, I’m in the minority.

Nothing is more appealing to the over zealous vacationer than the lifted skirt & perfumed inner thigh of the elusive Cuban cigar. Americans’ fascination with this forbidden fruit in conjunction with the cigar boom over the last 2 decades has made it a feeding frenzy for counterfeit cigar retailers south of the border. With that backdrop, we decided to put together a simple educational game of “spot the differences” so you can have a leg up on those with a questionable conscience.

Since Cohibas are the most counterfeited cigars on the market, I thought I’d do a comparison on that brand. Cohibas are also the most expensive cigars on the market, making them the most financially appealing to counterfeit. Fortunately, for a savvy consumer, they are the one of the hardest to duplicate. Here are the top 10 ways to easily spot the fake.

 1. First off, look at the color. The fake has much paler colors, especially the yellow.

2. The gold foiling is usually a dead giveaway. Notice how the horizontal bar in the “H” on the fake is inconsistent in size. As where the parts on the “H” on the real one are all completely equal.

3.  The gold borders above and below COHIBA are very fine on the real one. Not so much on the fake.

4.  The white boxes are probably the hardest to duplicate. Not only are the fakes uneven and not symmetrical, & there is 1 less row.

5.  The “Habana, Cuba” font is usually always finer on the fake. That’s usually hard to differentiate without having a real one to compare it to. But look where the comma is on the fake. It’s almost an apostrophe!

6.  The real Cohiba band ends its band almost seamlessly on the back. Notice how the band ends on the back of the fake. You can also see the under lapping band sticking up above the overlapping one on the fake.

7.  If you get a chance, feel how tight band fits around the cigar. The real ones are very tight and won’t slide up and down the cigar. The fake ones will.

8.  Apparently good glue is hard to find. It’s almost impossible to unwrap a real Cohiba cigar band without defacing some, if not most of it. Fake ones come off very easily.

9.  No Cohibas come in glass top boxes. I don’t care how many stickers, holograms, stamps or markings are on it. If the box has a glass top, it’s triple fake.

10. Do your homework. I know nothing about watches, but if someone is selling me a new Rolex for $500, it’s a red flag. If you’re buying any Cuban cigar that retails for $25 for $10, it’s a fake.

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