I live 45 minutes away from the Burlington JR store. When I smoked the pipe exclusively, I bought many tins of Escudo there for a ridiculously low price, some $3.00 less than what it sold at the lowest e-tailer.
Now that I more or less exclusively smoke cigars, you would think that JR would have become a haven; but from what I see, they mostly carry value rather than premium cigars, and I smoke premiums. For instance, they don't carry La Flor Dominicana, Illusione, Oliva, Tatuaje or Padron. Among the premiums they do carry that might be a great deal are the JR Ultimates, but I've yet to have the courage to buy a box.
Even given their very large humidor-the whole cigar store is a humidor-I've yet to be impressed with their inventory except to buy the Mayorga Maduro there; but this last box has been lousy with plugged cigars and burn problems; and the Mayorga is a value cigar.
Also, a 15% price increase took effect about a month ago, and I find that their prices, although still a good value, have gone up on those items I price.
They sell a lot of other goods cheaply, and cheap is what you get. Casting no aspersions on the biker folk, I find that not only are their goods cheap, but with the appropriate logos of Harley Davidson plastered all over them. Outside of tobacco, I've bought one pair of slippers and a bottle of water from them over the last 10 years.
In most instances, they seem to go by a Wal-Mart philosophy: if it's not cheap, we don't sell it.
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Originally Posted by alfredo_buscatti:
Among the premiums they do carry that might be a great deal are the JR Ultimates, but I've yet to have the courage to buy a box.
At the risk of rising the ire of the JR haters on this board, I need insist that, IMHO, the JR Ultimate line is perhaps the best available bargain in the "premium" cigar market . . . by which I mean, those smokes a step above the sub-$2.00/stick bundled brands. Plus, they are produced in nearly any vitola or wrapper one might reasonably desire, from Habanitos to Double Coronas, from candala to oscuro. I'd urge you to try a sampler at the least, and see if your fears are justified or not.
That's my
:-) , and worth every penny.
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