LOL, you and Excel (whodeeni) thought the same thing. That was one of the quotes from this years EPIC Herf; "I thought you were an old man?!?" - Excel
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I've been around here a good piece longer than Excel, too. Surprised the heck out of me. I had you for late 50's, mid-60's, at best guess. :-)
Maybe it's the old man avatar?
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I would like to think it is my wise and sage advise that made you think I was older, but it's probably the avatar or the grumpy old man way I have of writing sometimes. :-)
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I bet it was the wise and sage advice. :-)
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There is another possible answer to the question. To keep the quality control over the production there is a process for creating this high quality high demand cigar, which include supply of a specific product and time.

To rush the process will reduce the quality of the cigar which would not please anyone, or make the cigar just like other cigars that do not meet the pleasure of an Opus X. Say what you may about the cigar but the demand for the product produces the price paid.

Face it, if the cigar was not worth the price there would be no demand. How long does it take to grow the tobacco leaf? How long does the leaf need to age to obtain the flavor? What are the conditions necessary to produce the properly aged stick?

When you can answer these questions you will know why the cost is what it is and the availability where it is. If you can find another cigar with the quality of an Opus X at a discount price buy it. If Not, don't complain about the price or availability. JMHO :-)




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Another thought I had is this; From what I can gather, in order for a B&M to get sent Opus X, they must be a Fuente retailer. And again, from what I have gathered, to be a Fuente retailer, one must carry all of the lines of Fuente. That's a lot of product and cost for a B&M to carry for the chance of getting sent Opus twice a year. So it might be that the reason there are less shops that have Opus, is because the Boutique brands are putting out great quality smokes and not requiring such cumbersome retail tactics.



That all being said, you should look in the retailer section at the bottom of the forum and call some of them. Ol' Times is one that is close by and they have Opus at or around MSRP.
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That's pretty close to how Mark Just, "NorCalMark", the owner of Tower Cigars told it when we were talking about Opus X distribution once. There's an extra account level that a shop has to have to get Opus X, in addition to being a Fuente account, they have to be an Opus X authorized account. Mark / Tower has been an Opus X premiere account since the Opus X was first released and yes, you do have to sell such-and-such volume of certain certain lines to get others. For a long time, very few Opus X accounts were being added, so accounts typically got good quantities of cigars. All of a sudden, Fuente authorized more accounts, but production didn't seem to change much, so all of a sudden, accounts were now only getting a few boxes of cigars.

As for boutique cigar brands, actually a lot of them do have multiple levels of accounts and somewhat similar sales quotas which determine what a retailer can get from their line.
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Thanks for that Adam. I guess then the question for me is do the boutique brand accounts require as much $$ (sold or inventory) to get the limited editions? I would not think so, but that is only my opinion, not based on any hard evidence. From what I understood, Fuente makes retailers carry ALL of their lines from Fuente to Montesino, etc.
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Mark did mention some numbers/percentages of how many of "this Fuente / Ashton" you have to sell to get "That (high end) Fuente / Ashton", but, I don't remember any real specifics as to what they were to be able to say how they might compare to other cigar manufacturers numbers / percentages, say, for example, Tatuaje or Viaje as there are multiple levels of Tatuaje accounts and they are sales number & seniority based also.
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