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How I Set Street Price

Updated 2026-09-03 · by Eric

Every verdict on this site is judged at street price: the price you can actually find today without luck, patience, or an auction. Not MSRP, and not the deal I happened to catch. This page is the receipt for how that number gets set, because a review that judges value has to show its math.

Three prices, one that counts

Every cigar has three prices, and reviewers quietly pick whichever one flatters the story.

MSRP is the manufacturer's suggested price, and in this business it's closer to a press release than a price. Plenty of cigars spend their entire lives selling under it. Judging value at MSRP makes everything look like a bargain.

Deal price is what you paid when the stars lined up: the auction win, the coupon stack, the holiday sampler. It's real money, but it's not repeatable. Judging value at deal price makes my luck part of your verdict, and you can't spend my luck.

Street price is the everyday number: what the cigar goes for at the major online retailers on a normal day, and what a brick-and-mortar in a normal-tax state would ask. Not the single cheapest listing on the internet, and not the sticker at a lounge with a captive audience. The middle of the real market. That's the number a verdict has to survive, because that's the number you'll face when you go buy one.

The hard rule

A cigar that's only worth it on a deal isn't worth it. If a stick earns Five-Pack at $8 but I'd hand it away at its usual $12, the verdict is judged at $12 and says so. The deal goes in the review as prose... usually in the "Would I smoke it again?" section, as "at the price I paid, different math"... but it never changes the official tier. Deal-price exceptions are notes, not upgrades.

The reverse holds too. When I overpay at a B&M out of town, the cigar doesn't get punished for my geography. Street price cuts both ways.

The My Father Le Bijou 1922 Torpedo is the cleanest example I have. It came out of a Black Friday box that worked out to $6.74 a stick. I judged it at its roughly $12 street price anyway and said so in the review. A lucky deal never inflates a verdict.

Where the number comes from

When a review posts, the street price comes from checking current listings at the major online retailers and weighing them against what a local shop charges. What I actually paid is always disclosed separately, down to the receipt when I have it, with a source badge on every review saying whose money it was. If I got it as a gift or a steal, the badge says so and the verdict still runs at street.

Prices move. A street price in a review is the price as of the review date, and when a line's market price shifts enough to change the math, that's worth a note, not a quiet edit.

When a sale changes the math

Some cigars sit close enough to a tier line that a real, recurring discount pushes them over it. When that's true, I say so in the closing prose of the review, as a standing exception: a note that a specific discount changes the buying answer, while the official tier stays exactly where street price puts it. Three reviews on the shelf carry one right now:

• The Filthy Viking Toro rates Five-Pack at street, and the verdict names the exception outright: the brand discounts boxes 20-25% roughly quarterly, which lands a stick around $8 shipped. At that number I'd buy a box without a second thought, and I'd never pay full freight for one, because the sale is always coming.
• The Oliva Serie V Toro rates Five-Pack at its roughly $13 street. The line shows up on sale and at auction constantly, and the box I reviewed cost $5.70 a stick. At that price, in my own words from the review, "the price is what makes it a box, not the cigar."
• The Crux Guild Toro rates Five-Pack and closes with one exception to its own no-box call: at 20% off or better I'd break that rule and grab a box, because at that price the final-third babysitting stops mattering.

The counterexample proves the pattern. The Padrón 2000 Maduro Robusto carries no exception note because none is possible. Padróns are effectively never discounted anywhere, so the price on the shelf is the price forever, and the verdict has to survive at a permanent $9. It landed Hand-Me-One partly for that reason.

Why the tier never moves

Deal prices are temporary. Verdicts are supposed to outlive the coupon. A tier that rises during a promotion and falls when it ends is a tier nobody can trust, because it describes the retailer's calendar instead of the cigar. Pinning the official tier to street price keeps every review comparable to every other review, and keeps the scale meaning the same thing in July that it meant in January. The exception note carries the price nuance so the tier never has to.

How to read it

Read a verdict here as two answers, both stable:

• The tier is the pay-street answer: what the cigar is worth at the price it usually costs.
• The exception note, when one exists, is the watch-for-a-sale answer: the specific discount at which the buying decision changes, and by how much.

A Five-Pack with a standing exception is a different purchase than a Five-Pack without one. The first is a cigar to put on a price alert; the second is a cigar to buy a few of and move on. The deals page works the same direction: when a discount on a reviewed cigar shows up there, it links back to the review, so the price lands next to the verdict instead of floating alone. General buying mechanics, where the sales actually run, box splits, auction sites, live at how to buy cigars.

The number that means nothing

"70% off" says nothing about a cigar. It says something about the sticker the discount was calculated from, and inflated list prices are a standard move in cigar retail. A percentage with no anchor is marketing, not information. A verdict plus an actual per-stick price is the whole decision. That's the entire reason my exception notes name numbers: "about $8 a stick shipped" is an answer; "25% off" is arithmetic waiting for a trustworthy input.

Why bother

Because value verdicts without a price standard are unfalsifiable. "Great value" measured against MSRP, judged on a stick someone got free from the manufacturer, is a compliment, not a review. Fixing the price fixes the claim: when this site says Box Buy at $10, you can check the price, buy the cigar, and hold the verdict accountable. That's the entire point of writing any of this down.

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