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Help Identifying this cigar box please?
snowdriftantiques
Posts: 5 ✭
in Cigar 101
HI
I picked up this wooden cigar box at a thrift store. The label in the lid is partially missing as you can see. No amount of searching has led me to the maker. Does anyone have any idea what company used this and when? Just curious.
Thanks in advance
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Here is the pic. Thought it was loaded the first time.
Ask Jeeves.
He seems to know even less than Google or Bing.
Stumped me, I wonder if @TheCigarChick might recognize this.
@snowdriftantiques & @Yakster - I know the company for sure, and it was Swain, Earle & Co. They were based up in Boston, headed by three men (Swain, Earle, & Maynard) and were a dry goods mercantile that also had cigars and cigarettes, which wasn't uncommon in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The company itself started after the Civil War and ended in the 1920s. Although they were respected for a number of items, their claim to fame was coffee roasting, and they were pioneers in that trade in the Boston area.
As far as the box is concerned, I'm not certain it was for Swain, Earle & Co cigars as it was atypical for the time for cigars to be in wooden boxes. It's just a guess knowing what I know, but that company did sell their prized coffee in all sorts of wooden boxes; their tea was in tins, and cigars at the time were in the old-fashioned cardboard boxes. I can try and do a bit more research if time allows, but I can't seem to find anything about whatever that word in the middle is as it looks like the first word is an "R," but nothing is coming up. (I want it to be "Reina" which is Spanish for "Queen," but it's technically spelled wrong on the box.)
Hope that helps!
Very nice, Lindsay! You've replaced Frank as the smartest person on the forum. Sorry, Frank.
Wow, thanks so much. That will give me something to work with. I was beginning if it was even a cigar box.
And I thought the same thing about "Reina".
Thanks again, very appreciated.
My pleasure @snowdriftantiques - I love this sort of stuff!
@TheCigarChick Armed with a name, it looks like this was probably a coffee or tea box.
And to think I found the answer via a cigar forum!
Well done!
@snowdriftantiques That's what I'm here for, to answer all of life's weird, cigar-themed burning questions. (Pun intended, re: burning)
Oh c'mon Peter, Frank was never that smart, he just a a line of bs that won't quit.
True ^