Your cigar journey

[borndead1]

What was your 'journey' that led you to become the cigar aficionado that you are today? Did you start with premium smokes or ghetto stogies? Stealing from another thread, what was THE cigar that had you like, "Holy sh*t, this is a good smoke?"

I had smoked Phillies and Backwoods when I was a teenager (early 90s). In my early 20s I decided that puffing on a cigar while I drank alcohol was better than chain smoking cigarettes, so I'd buy one of those glass tubed gas station stogies if I was gonna be drankin'.

In 2003, I was at a smoke shop buying cigs and I decided that I had a hankerin' for a cigar. They had these cute little cigars called Arturo Fuente Exquisitos that had a really pretty, dark wrapper. And they were only 2 bucks! Sold. Needless to say, that cigar was AMAZING compared to what I had been smoking. So I started buying a couple of them every week. Then I got my first 'humidor' - a cylinder type carrying case that held 5 or 6 smokes. Around that same time, my boss at work brought in a catalog from Thompson Cigar. Looking through that catalog, I was like So I ordered one of their 'deals' - a small desktop humidor and a bundle of 'premium, handmade, imported cigars'.

Around this same time, I found a Tinder Box store at the mall. I started trying different cigars (all under $4, of course, because I made $12/hr and I couldn't imagine spending $5 on a cigar). So pretty soon I decided I needed a bigger humidor for 'aging' cigars (), cuz the internet says aged cigars are better. So again, I was suckered in by Thompson Cigars and their super amazing deal of a large barrel glass top humidor and ONE HUNDRED (!) premium, handmade, imported cigars! GOOD LORD, those 'cigars' were awful. And this is coming from a guy who was smoking gas station stogies a year earlier. A side note, though: that Thompson barrel humidor is AWESOME. I still have it, and it's still full. It's very well constructed, and the analog hygrometer is still dead accurate after 15 years!

Around this time, I discovered Club Stogie. Club Stogie led me to C-Bid, and eventually the holy grail of CCs. Gotta give a shoutout to Zemekone for guiding me through my first CC purchase: a box of H. Upmann Corona Majors. I still love that size cigar (5 X 42 is the only smaller cigar size I smoke) and I still love tubos. I could go on and on for another 10 paragraphs, but I won't.

Tell your story, BOTLs.