Quote:
Originally Posted by Wallbright
I don't know why but your little tag at the end of "Peace of the Lord be with you reminds" me of Cato the Elder and how he would end his speeches with "Carthago delenda est" (Carthage must be destroyed) regardless of the topic. Yours is much nicer though. 
Anyways, I tried searching for the number of US machine made cigars sold in US annually to no avail. |
Here is the link to one item. It doesn't mention how many premium hand-rolled cigars are sold, but in 2009, 12 billion of what I'd call "drugstore cigars" were sold by the big three. Here's a link, you can scroll down.
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_stat...cs/econ_facts/
Another link speaking about cigars gives a better idea when it talks about the billions of cigars and the millions of premium cigars. You can read here.
http://business.highbeam.com/industr...ts/food/cigars
Here's a paragraph from another source that gives an idea about the premium -vs- machine rolled cigars from the 1990s. (I assume that percentages haven't changed all that much - although I may be wrong.)
By 1994, the scarcity of premium, brand name products caused a horde of start-up companies, some foreign. As many as 150 small manufacturers of inferior cigars sprang up to meet the new need to provide smokers with the perishable product they desired, inundating the American market with lower-quality cigars. These "Don Nobodies' sold for as much as the better quality, better known brands due to a supply and demand imbalance. The established premium companies, whose products accounted for 40 percent of sales in dollar terms (ten percent of product sold), faced further competition from another set of foreign companies, mostly Caribbean, that used the shortage to establish a bigger foothold in the United States for their handmade cigar brands.
Another note.
In 2009, the two leading cigar companies in the United States had more than 60% of the market:
•Swisher International (i.e., nearly 50% of the U.S. market share with Swisher Sweets® and Swisher Little® brands)
•Middleton (i.e., about 13% of the U.S. market share with Black & Mild® brand)
Hopefully this helps.
Peace of the Lord be with you.