Collection care guides

Storage and maintenance, written for collectors. No sales, no hype.

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The order things need to happen in, and the decisions that come before buying.

How to Set Up a Humidor

The first weeks of a new humidor in order: seal check, hygrometer calibration, seasoning, choosing a setpoint, loading, and settling into a reading cadence.

Choosing a First Humidor

What actually matters in a first humidor and what is marketing: seal quality over cabinetry, why the included hygrometer is decoration, and how to size up.

Choosing a Humidor: What Matters

A framework for buying a humidor: which type suits your holdings, the three variables that decide whether it works, and what the price tag does not buy.

Conditions

Humidity and temperature: what to target, how to hold it, and what to do when it drifts.

How to Season a Humidor

Step-by-step guide to seasoning a new humidor with distilled water: why dry cedar needs it, the multi-day method, and the mistakes that ruin the lining.

Cigar Storage Humidity Targets

Practical RH targets for cigar collection storage: the 62-72% range explained, wrapper-specific setpoints, temperature interplay, seasonal adjustment.

How to Raise or Lower Humidor Humidity

Diagnosing a humidor reading too dry or too wet: root causes ranked by reversibility, the fix for each, and how long each takes to show on the hygrometer.

Humidor Temperature and the 135 Rule

Storage temperature for a cigar collection: the 65-70F window, what the 135 rule really encodes, the beetle threshold, and why refrigerators fail as humidors.

How to Calibrate a Hygrometer

Salt test calibration for hygrometers, step by step: the 75% RH reference method, digital vs analog drift, recorded offsets, and recalibration cadence.

Equipment

Containers, instruments and humidification — what matters and what is marketing.

Desktop and Glass-Top Humidors

The realities of desktop humidors: why stated capacity overstates by a third, what a glass top costs you, and the seal and tray details that decide performance.

Humidor Cabinets

What changes when a humidor gets large: air stratification, door seal over long spans, humidification sized to volume, loading order, and floor loading.

Travel Humidors

Choosing and packing a travel humidor: why crush protection outranks humidity over days, how cabin pressure and car heat behave, and what to put inside.

Electric Humidors

Why thermoelectric and compressor cooling behave very differently for cigars, when active climate control is justified, and the failure modes to plan for.

Tupperdors and Coolerdors

Using an airtight container or cooler for cigar storage: why the seal beats cabinetry, what you give up without cedar, and how to set one up in an afternoon.

Choosing a Hygrometer for a Humidor

What to look for in a humidor hygrometer: the accuracy spec that matters, why calibratability outranks precision, and why two cheap units beat one costly one.

Humidor Humidifiers Compared

Two-way packs, crystal gel and green foam compared honestly: how each fails, why sizing goes by volume not cigar count, and the truth about propylene glycol.

Spanish Cedar in Humidors

What Spanish cedar does in a humidor, why aromatic red cedar ruins cigars, and why lining thickness matters far more than whether the shell is solid wood.

Humidor Accessories Worth Owning

Which humidor accessories earn their place, which are gift-set filler, and the four inexpensive items that do more for a collection than anything else.

Keeping a collection

Aging, records, and the problems worth recognising early.

How to Keep a Cigar Journal

What to record in a cigar journal so it answers real questions years later: identity, provenance, storage history, and the session fields worth keeping.

Cigar Aging Basics for Collectors

What long-term cigar aging actually does: the chemistry, realistic timelines, date-marking systems, rotation practice, and when aging stops paying off.

Cigar Mold vs Plume

Telling mould from plume on stored cigars: the four tests, an honest position on whether plume exists, and what to do about the container rather than the cigar.

Common Cigar Storage Mistakes

The storage errors that quietly degrade cigar collections: overfilling, sunlight, the refrigerator myth, skipped calibration, and mixing infused sticks.

Cedar 2.0 Moved iPhone Sync to iCloud

Cedar 2.0 replaced the Cedar Account on iPhone and iPad with private iCloud sync. What that means for your collection, your web account, and your Pro purchase.

Tools

No account, no email, nothing to sign up for.