ACHP Episode 397 Ozzie Waves Goodbye...

Episode Summary

Episode 397 of A Cigar Hustler's Podcast hands the news desk to guest co-host John Carney of Bentley Cigars, who joins Michael and Palmer live from Deltona, Florida. The crew opens with an unusually candid behind-the-scenes cold open (Carney learning the teleprompter on the fly), then gets into what they're smoking: Carney and Palmer with the forthcoming Bentley GT 7x70 "Mammoth" Grand Toro, and Michael with the Hooten & Young Operation Neptune Spear. The show also previews an Espinosa event night at the shop with Jack Toraño and Richie Otero, plus a Patreon segment smoking a 601 Maduro Lancero.

The news block leads with a tribute to Ozzy Osbourne, who died at 76 after living with Parkinson's disease, including reflections on his final Black Sabbath farewell show at Villa Park and his multi-generational appeal. From there the guys cover the "door kick challenge" spreading among Florida teens — with a warning from the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office — and a long tangent on home security, stand-your-ground realities, and the Ring login scare in which users saw phantom May 28, 2025 device logins that Ring blamed on a backend display glitch.

The cigar business coverage is the meat of the episode. Carney's trending story: U.S. premium cigar imports are up roughly 6–7% year to date, which he and Michael attribute to a combination of genuine consumption growth, brands buying ahead of the August 1 tariff deadline, and the earlier PCA trade show calendar. They then dissect the tariff-driven price increases from Ashton (4.5% on Ashton, 3% on La Aroma de Cuba and San Cristóbal, none on Premium House Selection) and question the "lion's share absorption" language, followed by the flat 10% wholesale increase from E.P. Carrillo and Nat Sherman under the Scandinavian Tobacco Group umbrella. They also break down the EU's proposed minimum tobacco tax overhaul — a roughly 1,092% jump in the cigar/cigarillo floor rate plus a 15% cut to Brussels — and what it means for Spain, the world's second-largest Cuban cigar market.

Rounding out the show: Bocock Brothers' new NIL-licensed Florida Gators men's basketball and LSU baseball championship cigars, Florida's elimination of its (free) cigar wholesale permit, Sean Hardiman's departure as national sales manager at Forged Cigar Company (Carney, his former boss at La Flor Dominicana, gives an insider read), and well wishes for Crowned Heads' Miguel Schoedel. The "What's the Score" game tackles the Warfighter Night Shift redux (a stunning 94 from Halfwheel's Patrick Lagreid, made at Tabacalera Esteban Carreras) and the 2012 La Flor Dominicana TAA Airbender Maduro Torpedo, which Carney nails at 83 — a score he admits still stings.

In This Episode

1. 01
   Guest co-host and what they're smoking
   John Carney of Bentley Cigars takes over the news desk while the crew smokes the Bentley GT 7x70 and Hooten & Young Operation Neptune Spear.
2. 02
   Remembering Ozzy Osbourne
   A tribute to the Black Sabbath frontman, who died at 76 after years with Parkinson's, and his throne-bound farewell show at Villa Park.
3. 03
   Florida's 'door kick challenge'
   Hillsborough County deputies warn parents after teens kicked a door and fired an airsoft gun in a stand-your-ground state.
4. 04
   Ring login panic and home surveillance
   Ring says the mysterious May 28, 2025 device logins were a display glitch, prompting a talk about camera security and privacy.
5. 05
   Cigar imports up 6–7%
   Carney's trending story on why import numbers are climbing: real growth, the earlier PCA calendar, and buying ahead of tariffs.
6. 06
   Tariff price increases: Ashton, E.P. Carrillo, Nat Sherman
   A skeptical breakdown of Ashton's 4.5%/3% hikes and the flat 10% wholesale increase from the Scandinavian Tobacco Group brands.
7. 07
   EU's massive proposed tobacco tax hike
   The proposed minimum rate jump for cigars and cigarillos, the 15% revenue transfer to Brussels, and the risk to Spain's Cuban cigar market.
8. 08
   Bocock collegiate cigars, Florida permit change, and industry moves
   New Gators and LSU championship cigars, Florida dropping its wholesale permit, and Sean Hardiman leaving Forged Cigar Company.
9. 09
   What's the Score
   Guessing Halfwheel scores on the Warfighter Night Shift redux (94) and the 2012 La Flor Dominicana TAA Airbender Maduro Torpedo (83).

Brands & Cigars Discussed

Linked items are in our shop. Mentions without a link aren’t currently stocked or couldn’t be matched with confidence.

Transcript

All right. Well, let me know when you're ready, Mr. Carney. All right.

It's recording over here. Whenever you guys are ready. Ready? I'm at the top.

Yeah. Okay, go ahead. Oh, yeah, you talk. You're good.

I open the show up? You open the show. Oh, great. Here we go.

All right. Well, I was confused. Yeah. Okay.

Do I have to say the episode? Relax. Yeah. Say who you are first.

Introduce yourself. Episode 397. Welcome to Scars of Pocket. Okay, gotcha.

Here we go. I thought it was all you. We got to bring the energy. Bring the energy, John.

All right. I get it. I'm introducing myself. Yes.

Before we get started, Michael, how do we get the people their hands on show swag? Ooh, we're going right with that. Wait, he didn't introduce himself yet. I haven't done that yet.

He's still reading. But Michael, because I thought this was you. Yeah, you're saying that to him. Michael, how do we get their hands on show swag shirts?

com and check out our swag and apparel? Wait, did we start? No. What?

We didn't start. What do you mean? We didn't start. He didn't say who he was, but he didn't do the intro.

So you go ahead and hold on. Then you say that, and then I say, and this week we're gearing up for Big Espinosa event night here at the shop. I don't see any of your words, do I? I want you to start with, hi, I'm John Carney.

It's not on there. Hi, I'm John Carney from Bentley Cigars. From Bentley Cigars, and I am a guest co-host today on Cigar Housers Podcast. Carney trending story.

I got to pick up a trending story? Yes, later. Well, you're like halfway through the show now. Go to the back of the beginning.

My social media kit. So all the stuff I have on here is just me. It's just you. I can't see it.

You can't see any of it. I can't see any of that. Perfect. I can't see any of it either.

I thought this shit was you. No. All right, now this makes a lot more sense. All right, I'm ready to go.

No, let me get the cigar lit up. We can light it up in a little bit. You can light it up when you're talking and stuff. It'll be fine through conversation.

It makes more sense now. All right, so you ready to go? Yep, whenever you're ready. All right, go ahead.

Welcome to the Cigar Hustler Podcast, episode 397. I'm John Carney, guest co-host reporting live here in Deltona, Florida. But before we get started, Michael, how do the people get their hands on Show Swag shirts? John, that's an excellent question.

I'm so glad that you asked me that. com and check out our latest swag. Right now we have the Cappuccino Assassinino and the BDP shirt available. If you buy one t-shirt, you can get the second one 40% off.

Awesome. I think I'm going to buy some of it. It was a good sales pitch. It was a good sales pitch.

Thank you. That's one we saw. This week we're gearing up. We've got a big Espinosa event night here at the shop.

Special guest Jack Taranio. Jack will be here. We've got Richie Otero. He used to be called Richie Riot.

He's Richie Riot, he's Richie Otero now, I think, right? He's very professional. And he's joining us Friday night. We domesticated him, yeah.

Yep, joining us Friday night, so that'll be exciting. I'm going to light this cigar up here, because I've been, you know, first time co-hosting. Yeah, this is nice. Very excited.

You're going to be okay. I'm very excited. I'm happy, I'm happy to know how organized this actually is behind the scenes. Yeah.

There's a lot of work. Well, I'll tell you, look, for me, I was like, man, how these guys pull this off, this is chaotic. And it's really not chaotic. For those that watch it, there's a lot of work and time and effort that goes in this, and we're going to make this look as seamless as possible today, but I'm doing a lot of things other than just smoking here during the same time.

A lot goes on in that journey. You no longer get to just show up and be like this stud. We have sucked you in, and now you are going to be reading the teleprompter, giving us the news, updating us on all the things that are going on in the cigar industry. It's all you today.

And I haven't pre-looked at it, so everything's a surprise to me at this moment. Oh, that's the way I do it too. Yeah. We don't pre-read the stories here.

Before we get into any further, we should talk about what we're smoking real quick, right? What we're smoking right now? Yeah. I am smoking, you can't see me over here, I'm smoking the Bentley GT, the 770 Mammoth cigar.

Gargantuan? It's coming out soon. I know you like the big 770s, Mike. It doesn't fit my mind.

It was his first choice. I mentioned five other cigars, he says I smoked that. I'll take the biggest one possible. I am smoking the Hooten & Young Operation Neptune Spear, which is, that was the Bin Laden yada yada?

That was the operation code name for the operation of the Osama Bin Laden capture kill mission by the Navy SEALs, so that's the first, the first Navy themed project that Hooten Young's had, so that's an exciting smoke, honestly it's one of my favorites, it's got a real rich dark wrapper on it. Yeah, it does. And it's a pretty band and everything, man. Yeah, it's really well done.

Stories behind it are great. I'm smoking the same as Mike, the 7x70 Bentley GT Grand Toro. You also like it, bae? Well, it's coming out here soon in the next like 60 days, we'll have it.

We're doing a small run of it. I had specifically two of them remaining from our trade show. And shockingly, they've been stored incredibly well. I've got Renaults going on at the house, so I grabbed these and I'm like, these were in pristine condition.

Nice. So, yeah, we're smoking the 770 today. Perfect. But speaking of the news, today's show, there's a lot of good news here.

Yeah. The first one's kind of somber. The world mourns the loss of rock legend Ozzy Osbourne. Yep.

You're going to just kind of cover briefly about all of them before we're going to get into it. So, go ahead. Yeah, there's a comma there. Yeah.

So, we're going to hit that comma and pause a little bit. Florida teens also are taking stupidity to a new level. Who knew that was even possible? The Door Kick Challenge.

Yes. Never heard of that. When Ring Camera users panic over suspicious logins, I'm a heavy Ring user, I'm very excited about this one, we're gonna break it all down. Yes, excellent.

Plus, bonus here, cigar prices going up, per usual. Okay, they never go down. They never go down, they haven't gone up in my world, but you know, they're going up in the industry, we're gonna tell you why that's happening. Ashton, Epic, and Nat Seiko are reacting to their new tariffs this week.

And the EU is trying to torch the whole industry with a massive tax hike. Excellent. So there's a lot going on here. There's another one we've got going on here, more news.

We've got Bococs, new championship smokes. We're going to talk about those big change in Florida's wholesale rules. Kind of big change, not real, at the same time, excited to hear your views on that, and we play What's the Score with the Warfighter, Night Shift, and Special Cigar for our guest co-host, me. That's you.

That's for you. I think it's sitting over here. No, that's the Patreon. That's the Patreon.

For the Patreon, we're going to be smoking the 601 Lancero, right, Maduro Lancero? Yes. Correct? Correct.

And we're going to, you know, after the show, we'll try and coax you into the Patreon as well. There's so much here, and it's all happening right now, here on episode 397 of the Cigar Hustle Podcast. All right. Let's get into it, buddy.

Go ahead. Tell me about Ozzy. So Ozzy, Ozzy Osbourne. We all know Ozzy Osbourne.

By the way, social media today, crazy with Ozzy stuff. Not just crazy with Ozzy news, but suggesting you tag music with him. So I've had a couple of posts today that I intentionally tagged with music to see if we got some more attention on that. But big thing, Ozzy Osbourne.

So, dies at age 76. Family says the legendary Black Sabbath singer was surrounded by love. Osbourne, who lived with Parkinson's disease, had recently performed a farewell show in the UK. Didn't see the show.

If you didn't see it, incredible. Super cool Metallica. Everybody was there. Rock star Ozzy Osbourne has died, according to multiple reports.

It was with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning. His family has said, "The Paul Metallica. Everybody was there. Rockstar Ozzy Osbourne has died according to multiple reports.

It was with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning. His family is said in a statement to the press, signed by wife Sharon Osbourne and their children, Kelly, Jack, Amy, as well as his son, Louis, from his prior marriage to Thelma Riley. He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family and privacy at this time.

The Black Sabbath rocker lived with the That's what he did with Parkinson's disease. Earlier this month, Osborne played what was dubbed his final bow from a throne at Villa Park in the UK. Osborne announced he had previously diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, a progressive nervous system disorder, in January of 2020, a condition he later told Los Angeles Times that he'd lived with it since 2003. "I'm not dying from Parkinson's.

I've been working with it most of my life," the singer told the newspaper. "I've cheated death so many times. If tomorrow you read Ozzy Osborne never woke up this morning, This morning, you wouldn't go, oh my God, you'd go, well, it finally caught up with him. Right.

I think it did, and I think that's how everybody reacted. It was very sad, but not a wild shock. The guy had a rough couple of years, right? For sure.

I mean, so, you kind of grew up with Ozzy, I would assume, right? Yeah, 100%. Have you gone to any of his concerts or anything growing up? Went to zero Ozzy Osbourne concerts.

I did, however, just see Zach Wilde, his guitarist. Yeah. He's the Panteras guitarist, but I just saw him recently, but I never got to see Ozzy Live, no. Really?

D. and stuff like that. And the guy was amazing back then, that was, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago, maybe longer. But man, this guy is 76 years old and he had to have himself strapped to this chair to perform in front of all of these people one last time.

And you hear over and over again, like, oh, it's a farewell tour, this is the farewell tour, this is a farewell tour. This is legit the farewell tour, right? He was done. He couldn't do it anymore.

He was... Anybody else would have quit, you know what I'm saying? I knew he was doing a concert, I didn't know it was going to be the farewell until, really until yesterday, and I was with a friend of mine, and he said, man, he just performed like two weeks ago in this crazy concert, it was like his farewell concert, he obviously kind of knew something was up, but yeah, they had him strapped in, I mean, he was like in a child's seat, like a car seat, practically, but he performed, it was amazing, I mean, the music sounded great, have you seen it? I saw clips of it.

Yeah, yeah. It was quite fascinating. I mean, it was huge. It had to have been 100,000 people, or it looked like it.

Massive stadium. But legendary. You had the reality show with him when we were in middle school and high school. You know, right at the end of the 80s, you had, you know, Iron Man, the Iron Man song.

That was my entrance theme for middle school basketball. I remember, you know, remember when I was in sixth grade, the A-team had the Iron Man song. So I'm like, I can't wait to come out to Iron Man, that's going to be really cool. So yeah, just a generational, you know, figure.

The guy did the concert, zero pain meds. Like, he wanted to feel it and be on point for his last concert at 76 years old. I mean, that's pretty incredible. It's highly likely that's the first time he's ever been entirely sober on a concert.

To be realistic with you. So, yeah, fascinating stuff. Ozzy, true legend, 76, he had a good run. I just think that we all need to be a little more like Ozzy, you know?

Less bat-eating. You know what, I'm okay with a bat-eating. The guy was 100 miles an hour all the time, all the way up to the very end. I mean, that is impressive, dude.

It's interesting, he announced, I thought the interesting thing here in the article was the January 2020 was when he announced it. And looking back, if you watch the Osbournes' reality show, it's obvious that he had challenges with it, right? 100%. So now you look back at that and there was a lot of things, so it's really miraculous all the things he did over the last 22 years, you know, he was in his early 50s when this was going on, and, you know, a real challenge to deal with it, and truly impressive, and the farewell tour was awesome, it gave me a little bit of chills, because it was now, too, after he passed away yesterday, It was like, man, what a moment to be part of it.

They're showing people crying in the stands. Now, the one thing I found interesting about it was there was young people that were obviously in their, like, 20s crying. Right. And maybe the culture of him maybe in the UK is even more different than here.

Right. They didn't really get to see him in his prime for the most part, you know. No. So it's sad seeing that play out, but I would be interested to see how and why and where that connection with that young crowd.

p to the legend man so uh yeah rest in peace aussie now on to something uh A little more lighthearted? We have much more lighthearted. We're in Florida man news. Yes.

So we got Florida teens doing some dangerous stuff per usual, right? Florida teens, dangerous social media challenge has police warning parents and homeowners. Here's this one. Police in Florida issued a warning after a group of minors took part in the door kick challenge, a social media trend aimed...

Frightening homeowners. Okay? Okay. So, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office said in a Facebook post that five juvenile suspects were walking around a neighborhood in Riverview, Florida, Sarasota area, if anybody's interested.

When two of them approached the house, officials said one of the individuals who was wearing a ski mask kicked the front door and fired an airsoft gun. The miners then fled the area. Deputies said the door kick challenge could turn into a dangerous situation and encouraged parents to talk to their children. the door kick challenge is a prank circulating on social media and we're going to give you the hashtag for it hashtag team hcso is asking for parents to speak to their children about the dangerous trend and could end in a tragedy yeah definitely could end a tragedy in florida the hillsbury county sheriffs uh had reported all this stuff they're telling people to be uh to be Be careful.

The hashtag HCSO is Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. Right. I thought we were giving the hashtag to the door kick lounge. To find the show.

No, no. We're going to really hustle here. You want to participate. John just gave you the hashtag.

There you go. No, I got more. I got more. He likes to do that.

The video was released by Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office and they approached the doors kicking the stuff in. It was all to get shares essentially. So they want validation. The children are trying to get validation.

They want attention. We're in Florida, man. They're going to get killed. Yeah.

Okay. So, it's two o'clock in the morning. You're at home. You're in bed.

And someone kicks open your door. What happens? A pie house? Yeah.

Alarm goes off, you get shot. The alarm goes off, you get shot. All the lights pop on. If you're a threat, you get shot.

Okay. Palmer, what about you? m. The dogs go crazy.

They chase them down the street. Yeah. You have 75 animals, so. Well, two now, one just died, thank you.

Yeah, but that one wasn't really a threat anyways. I picked him up today. You picked him up today. I picked up his little urn.

It's gonna be a little, it's gonna be rough at the Palmer's house. No, no, I sent pictures, she's fine. Okay. Yeah, no, the 80-pound boxers chase you down the street, nipping and pulling at your legs.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know. Imagine your house. Oh, yeah, forget it.

Yeah, they hear you yell no bubbles, they're like, oh, it's fine. Before I have the opportunity to get to the gun, you have to, you get to meet the shepherd. Right. Who doesn't really like anybody.

Right. Doesn't like the UPS guy at the door. Doesn't even like my kids sometimes. Right.

Somebody with a ski mask. But loves mommy. So... Not to give...

This will play into... We got the ring coming up next, which plays into this. Right. But my house is automatically set up, if the alarm goes off, to turn on all the lights, outdoor and indoors.

So I have spotlights, cameras all over. So everything activates, everything starts recording. Right. And...

I mean, it happens. Even when the alarm just goes off, I get up out of bed, Alexa turns everything on instantly, and everything's recording, and then I assess what's going on. 9% of the time, it's something completely irrelevant. Occasionally, it'll be like an Amazon driver delivering at night, and you have it, but a door getting kicked in is a completely different situation.

Does that Amazon driver freak out when they drop that off on your porch at three o'clock in the morning? I freak out more by the Amazon driver. I would imagine, yeah, but the driver... Have you ever had a package delivered that early in the morning?

Sure, yeah, yeah, all the time. Dude, they light your house up like it's a SWAT team. They come up with a flashlight and stuff. Yeah, well, they got their high beams on, which they trained them to do this, and they hit you with the high beams.

Yeah, because they don't want to get shot. Yeah, so my whole house is lit up, and I think we're getting SWAT team taken over, and it's just Amazon dropping off some batteries. m. package.

99. So, the ring notification goes off for me if there's someone approaching the door, right, on the phones. And Bubbles hears that, and Bubbles charges the door. Oh, he's trained now, he knows the sound.

As soon as he hears the sound, he's gone, so I can only imagine how some of those Amazon drivers feel in the morning, when they're dropping something off at my house, for sure. Amazon, after dark, has got to be one of the sketchiest things to be a part of, ever. I can't even imagine, because I assume anyone that comes to my house after the sun's gone down has nefarious plans. I don't care who it is.

They're up to no good. Like, okay, what would you be doing at my house after dark? Why are you here? So that's a really challenging job, I think.

And you can't see things. There's pets. The vocal's bumping the night. And then you got these idiot kids, Florida kids, the new Florida man's Florida kids.

What are they thinking down here? They're banging doors. Yeah, this is such a good idea. Like, hey, we're going to kick doors down in a state that's a stand-your-ground state with guns.

Right. Not political. And point a gun down the foyer. We're going to carry an airsoft gun, which is exact replicas, essentially.

And we're going to do it in a state where the politics, whether you agree or not, have said that the people can just shoot you if you're on your property and feel threatened without question. So... Not a good idea. Insanity.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. You're doing...

Over in Polk County, Grady's over there telling people right now, pull them in the house after you shoot them. Pull them in the house. Well, John, I got to tell you, you've done two news articles so far, and you're doing... It's been outstanding.

Thank you. Thank you. There was some good information here. The Hillsborough County Sheriff's, and we'll move on to the next here, but the main concern is them getting killed.

Right. Of course. You don't want kids. Because look, we've all done dumb shit when we were younger, right?

I've never kicked open a door of a person's home. I've done other really despicable things that I won't speak of on this podcast. Yeah, the ding-dong ditch. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. It would have been a little bit more elaborate than that, but you know, in general, I would never ever kick open someone's door, I would know that I'd get shot, you know, so the last statement in this article from the sheriff, which was great was, what's going to happen is you're going to have another national headline, and it's gonna be very, very sad. So they already know what how this plays out. So don't kick the doors, right?

Don't kick them in. If you're going to do it, don't bring the airsoft gun. Just don't do it at all. People are going to shoot you in the airsoft gun.

They are in the state and they have the right to do it. Yeah, I mean, be a kid, do dumb shit, but don't do dumb shit that could cause you to die or someone else to die. You don't want your obituary died because of the door kick challenge. Right.

So, anyway, this one's close to home for me. I'm a huge enthusiast of Ring. I've got probably, I don't know, how many Ring devices do you have? No, just like one.

One, I have like a hundred. Really? Twenty-seven of them are cameras. Really?

Yeah, oh yeah. When you're on my property, I know it. If you're on my neighbor's property, I know it because I've taken over my neighbor's surveillance. They contracted me to surveil their house, so Ring responds.

Do you have a special room in your house just for this? I do have one, actually, yes. Ring responds after users report suspicious logins on May 28th, very specific date. The Amazon Ring security company has addressed widespread user concerns about potential unauthorized access to accounts after viral TikTok videos sparked panic among customers who discovered suspicious login activity dated on May 28, 2025.

The controversy began when Ring users took to TikTok to share screenshots showing multiple unrecognized devices, apparently accessing their accounts on the same date. Some users reported seeing as many as 17 unknown devices added to their accounts on May 28, with device names appearing as device name not found in the Ring Control Center. The reports quickly went viral on TikTok, with users encouraging the reports to be taken care of, so they were, the TikTok, TikTok was spreading some good today, it seemed like, on May 28th. Ring explained that the backend update had caused past login dates to appear incorrectly as May 28th, sure it did, and caused device names to display as a device not found.

They emphasized that the issue was purely visual, and did not have any impact on security, so erroneous login dates just randomly appearing, sketchy. So, you're obviously a big Ring guy. Huge. Does this change how you feel about Ring at all?

No. For me, I don't concern myself on a personal basis with people getting into, if somebody wants to watch what I'm doing in my house, I don't really want it, but I know that's possible. You got a bedroom camera? No bedroom cameras.

Nothing over the bed? No bedrooms and no bedroom cameras. We're not connected to the system. You're not reviewing performance later?

There's no bedroom cameras. 75 cameras, not one in the master bedroom? Not one in the master bedroom. None in the bathrooms.

I have capability. Nothing in the toilets? Nope. Nope.

They're watching the potatoes, Mike. Nope. I have capability of having cameras in every single room. I have them closed and shut off and deactivated, and I have them covered so you can't access them.

But I don't have a major concern of somebody watching me. I wouldn't really want it. If I knew it, I would stop it. But if somebody was watching me, I'm not doing anything that I'd be concerned.

I'm not doing anything nefarious. My main concern for having his ring is so I can watch what's going on. So I have it for that purpose. And I also have some...

Some fail-safes, you can buy some other technologies that track outside devices coming in. Oh, really? But, yes, so like mesh networks, you have a mesh Wi-Fi network, so I have some of those connected so I can monitor what's coming in and out. So if something's new from the outside, in theory it should give you information.

So I think we're pretty safe. I'd say we're probably 90% safe. I know there's people watching because I pay ring if there is an alarm that goes off to physically have somebody watch it. So they go on and look and they can approach and talk to somebody through it if they need to, but this is obviously not just a glitch, in my opinion, I mean, absolutely 100% people can do this because if they didn't, they wouldn't have businesses that are making money or them making money on selling things that protect you on another level, right?

For sure. For sure. Palmer, does this change anything for you as far as you have a couple ring devices? We've got four.

Yeah. Yeah, four. No, no, I didn't. Are you okay?

Dates are wrong, whatever. I'm gonna look at my front door and back door. A little bit of hacking. I mean, they're gonna see John Carney in his bathrobe, for sure.

Well, the thing is, they say- I've seen you in the bathrobe. I don't wear it anymore. You've let it go? I don't wear it at the house.

Oh, let it go. I have let it go. I have retired it. It's too hot.

There's stories about them hacking and then they talk to your children through the cameras. Yeah. That's the scary part. I mean, I don't care if they watch me walk around my underwear.

But, I mean, there's no kids at my house. But in John's case, though. Yeah, and it's always like some racial slur or something anti-Semitic or something. Right, or, you know, come meet me at the park later when your parents go to sleep.

That's pretty creepy. Well, that's what it was in the movie I saw. So ring, the likelihood of a ring being hacked is much harder in terms of somebody getting into it from your house. They would have to be kind of on your network.

Sorry, not on your network. Ring's not as difficult to get in. Somebody could hack it. the ones that you hear that people are hacking more are ones that are on your network at your house that are they would have to physically be on there so you get like wi-fi connector somebody you can connect from like your neighbor's house right and then you'd have like a like an outlet camera and you could say somebody's voices on it or you could get the signals that they have could get crisscrossed and whatnot and you can hear things on those types of stuff so it's here's here's the thing for me we've crossed the we've already crossed that threshold of of surveillance Right.

They're there, whoever they are. If somebody wanted to, they could use all these things in real negative ways. So you just hope, in my opinion, that they're as safe as possible and that there's not being used in negative ways. And in reality, too, for people, for me, I'm just not doing illegal things at my house.

So I don't have too much to turn, but I'll tell you, I do check. I go on, I check, and there's a lot of the time that there are devices that are like unidentified device, unidentified device. And I'll just plug it in the chat, GBT, and have it tell me what it most likely would be, and a lot of the time it comes back and tells me what it is, and it was like, my wife had a Wi-Fi calculator for her work, and that was connected, so I was like, alright, so I just removed certain things, but it is worth going in and checking, this is a big deal, hopefully it's a wake up for people that they monitor what they're doing and are being careful. Alright.

Excellent. Okay, go ahead, hit us with the, how you doing? We're good. We got a trending story.

Okay. I think this is going to be a hot one. This is going to be cigar related. Is it?

Yes. Okay. Is it John Carney's trending story? Well, it's going to play into what we're talking about with some price increases coming up next.

Yeah. So, trending story here. I just read on Cigar Fiscianato that cigar imports are up over 6% currently right now in the second quarter of the year. Really?

through april right so we're already past it so they get reports a month or so after and it was up over seven percent for the first quarter of the year so we're upper end of single digits right where really we thought i think that the industry felt there was probably going to be a flat year uh since we just ended all the conversation i had with people were five years of you had a great five-year run we got a level off somewhere right i'm interested in what your thoughts might be on I think that's a big deal. I was told this year was going to be flat. I go to retailers, they tell me that they're not sure what's going on. Obviously, a little bit has to do with the election cycle.

But 7% is not a baby number of growth. 6% is not a baby number of growth for a small industry like ours. Right, as far as importation. 5% to 2% growth maximum when I got in the industry about 16 years ago.

So for me, that's a super trending story of where we are. Why is that happening? S.? Or do you think that maybe some of these bigger companies are concerned about the August 1st deadline and tariffs actually jumping up another 10% on average, especially in Nicaragua?

I think it's a combination of what you said, with the tariffs, and I also think it's a combination of people getting ahead and the decision makers getting ahead in terms of purchasing, I don't, I think a lot of people during the last five years played from behind, and they made good money, and I think the trend in the business is to try to play from ahead, if you're a newer company, or you're an existing large company, what's the most damaging thing for you to have, not have cigars when you need them? Right. And I've heard companies mention, you know, publicly where, hey, we have more cigars right now than we can sell. And that's a good position.

So we'll have them. So I think there's a combination. One tariffs. We didn't know about tariffs in January.

Real numbers. And I'll tell you one thing the cigar business doesn't do is doesn't do proactive very well. They do reactive. OK.

Right. So they weren't planning in that first quarter of the year to ship all these cigars in. So I think there was some consumption growth. I think a little bit of what you saw in the second quarter, what we're seeing right now with the reports from April is the tariffs, but I think a lot of it is just people getting ahead.

I think there's a lot of cigars. I think there's these factories are making a lot of products, and I think people are buying them and creating and trying to get them in. I know I plan further ahead than I would have probably in the past, where I'm at right now, for buying more cigars. So I don't want to run out.

It's the kiss of death. Right. I think the Q1 was more on an uptick for the anticipation of PCA. This is the second year that the cigar convention had occurred early on in the year.

The first time it happened, you weren't prepared. You couldn't prepare. So you had a lot of releases that came out that didn't really release until later on in the year. Whereas this year, people wanted to be ahead of that.

So I think that that would have boosted your numbers. And I think that going into Q2, if those numbers are true, then I would think that they're just trying to get ahead of the tariffs as well. Do I think the economy is in absolute peril? No, but I do think that two things are going to happen at the tail end of this year.

One is smaller brands are going to disappear quickly because they're not going to be able to compete against manufacturers that can produce and dictate their own pricing and tariffs. And two is, I think that some people are pulling back as far as consuming, and one of the biggest industries that will feel that will be the cigar industry. It's certainly going on in the whiskey business and alcohol business right now. Obviously, I'm involved in that.

Also, people are drinking less alcohol. It's getting out of trend. Nobody wants to be like their parents. No, no.

And the non-alcohol game's growing. You can see it everywhere you go now. There's non-alcoholic beers everywhere you go. uh cigars i think have non-alcoholic cigars non-alcoholic but i think cigars are a very different product than i think the industry as a whole uh you know not narrowing it down and we've done a pretty good job as an industry differentiating premium cigars and i think premium cigars have a good image around them or a better image around them than they used to have people understand them more so i still think we're going to have some strong business uh but i i'm with you the pca thing is a great thing for the first quarter of the year because that second quarter report still It applies right into PCA, right?

Right. Q3, Q4 are going to be a great sign of where the industry is at. Right. I do think that the industry has not slowed down as much as it was anticipated.

I don't think we're going to have a big retraction. I think the year will be flat to up a few percentage points. If you look at some retailers, some retailers are doing well. But if you look at a lot of retailers, a lot of retailers that aren't good at what they do, their numbers are down, without question.

Without question. So that's my trending story. Okay. Trends, you know, trends, we're going to watch it and see what happens with it.

Okay. On the same note, we've got the amazing world of cigar news. Yes. Wow, I love this.

A-wow. Ashton increases prices due to tariffs. Ashton increasing prices due to tariffs. Yes.

Effective Monday, July 21st, the prices of Ashton cigars will be increased due to tariffs. Due to the United States government's newly imposed tariffs on imported goods, we are implementing a modest price increase, at least it's modest, on Ashton, La Roma De Cuba, San Cristobal cigars, as well on Ashton, pipe tobaccos. Okay. Interesting.

Said Sathya Levine, president, CEO of Azure Distributors, in a letter to our retail partners. In the spirit of fostering a healthy ecosystem built on brick-and-mortar wellness, we have decided to absorb the lion's share of the cost burden resulting from new tariffs. The company's price increases vary by product. 75 to the MSRPs.

30 to the MSRPs. And Premium House Selection, no increase. And Savoy Humidors and Accessories, no increase. No info on the price increase on pipe tobacco.

Obviously, that's not relevant for the large part of this market. 5% increase on wholesale cost, I would assume, correct? Yeah, so if you think that, I mean, if the argument is that 5% is your wholesale raise cost, which I don't necessarily believe, as far as the total 10%, It doesn't sound like they're taking on the lion's share, does it? That doesn't say it to me.

No. Um, this is not a knock on them. This is, this is part of this. Oh, this is, for me, it's totally a knock on them.

Yeah. But not for you. This is a knock on everybody. Right.

This is a knock on any price increase. Yeah. For this tariff related, specifically them, because this is the story. Right.

Uh, four and a half percent price increase on a wholesale price is more than what the 10% tariff would be from the Dominican Republic. Right. Or from Nicaragua. Now, Nicaragua might go to 19%, so there may be a little bit of anticipating here, but this was Ashton-branded cigars, this is all Dominican Republic, and their partners...

Well, they talked about La Aroma de Cubans and Cristobal as well. 5% out of their bread and butter products that are coming out of the Dominican Republic, where their partner, who produces those cigars, Fuente, The highest price points coming out of, in theory, their most leveraged price point, correct? Right. And then, not to mention, but the tariff raises the price, and then the retailer keystones the entire price.

I think the key focus here is how much money they're making on premium house selection. A 10% tariff had no impact on profit. It was almost non-existent, right? Like, oh, hey, 10% on that doesn't mean anything.

No, anything, I've said anything that's 3% or 4% or above is in excess of what the tariff actually is, unless you're a true private label and have zero relationships with these manufacturing partners that you have. Right. The biggest price that I've looked at, in terms of an increase on my end, on The Insider, the biggest increase on a tariff for me that I saw was like 25 cents. Yeah.

On something. That's the biggest that I've seen so far. We got the full whack. Yeah.

We got the full hit. Yeah. We had $100,000 worth of product come in. We paid $10,000 on the tariff.

Yeah. Oh, so you paid essentially on the dollar value of what it was. Interesting. Yeah.

It's definitely more difficult for brand owners than it is for manufacturers. Mm-hmm. 100%. But you are right.

You are correct. Like, there are ways to kind of work around that. and you would assume that Ashton has a really good relationship with Fuente as well as Pepin where those things could potentially be modified but who knows but who knows yeah I'll tell you the one thing the premium cigar industry's done well is they've always done really well with making money off price increases uh we're the best at it yes like when I mean price increase I don't mean on the wholesale, but something's going to cause a price increase for me to do business, we're excellent at nickel and diming and being like rounding up, rounding to the right number. Well, it's 2%, but let's make it 4 just to make it a round number.

So the math is easier. 60. Yeah, it looks better. The industry's always done a great job of that.

And I've had discussions with people before, big names in the business, where they've been like, "Hey, this association I'm a part of, I'm like, how much did they raise it? Like $2,000. But I'm like, you make a special cigar for them every year, right? And he goes, yes.

And I go, how many cigars did you make last year? And he goes, $10,000. 25? I go, then you'll pay the extra $2,000 and you'll make an extra $3,000.

And he was like, well, I never looked at it that way. So I was like, that's how everybody else is looking at it. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but I'm like, let them raise your dues. Okay, so, So my dues went up for PCA, say it goes up $10,000, guess what, every cigar I sold at PCA is going to be, I'm going to sell 50,000 cigars, every single one of them is going to be 10 cents more, nobody will notice a difference, you make freaking five grand, you pay for the whole thing, this industry is notorious on it, and prices never come down, and I'm surprised by the people in the business that have said, if these tariffs go away, we're just going to leave the prices where it is.

Now, I think Skip Martin talked about it, and Steve Sakka did explain why very well, other than just saying, "Hey, we're not gonna do it," because I think saying, "Hey, we're not gonna do it," makes sense, that doesn't make as much sense, you know, just ignoring it, but both of them brought up, we're not gonna bring it down because I'm gonna have people, how much of a headache is it gonna be for people to have cigars at this price, the cigars at this price, now I'm saying it's priced here, it's very confusing. Oh, and you piss off a whole bunch of retailers. Like, wait a second, because I bought this before, and now, and I'm retailing it at $13, now it's $12, like, I still paid more into that product when I received it. Well, then the byproduct is, what about the retailer that doesn't ingest it because they're going to get it, or you don't, you know, whatever happens, then that makes you look bad as a manufacturer at the same time that you can't control what your pricing's at.

So you're going to make an idea, you're going to make a conscious decision. I don't think that's as big of a deal, but I definitely, the key, the key point, The question here was the absorption of the lion's share. Why did they put lion's share in it too? Like, come on.

And when we say we're absorbing it, what we're really trying to say is that's not going to happen. Allegedly. I don't think lion's share is an actual unit of measurement. Yeah.

Carry the one is lion's share. Yeah, exactly. So, there we go with that. That's the news on that price freeze for the ash, and we rip that one up.

That one up. Yep. Epic and Nat Seco to raise prices due to tariffs. So here we go.

We got, uh, Epic and Nat Seco. Hey, hold on just a second, John. Do you want to say a name, Michael? Oh, yes.

Thank you, Mr. Palmer. I totally forgot about that. The first name will be Joshua Howard.

Congratulations, Joshua. Okay. Back to you, John. Is there a thing called Mike's Social Media Minute?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Cool. There is. I'm interested to see what that is. Okay.

Yeah, in the future here. It's kind of sad. Yeah. This one is sad.

Nat Seiko, Epic, both are part of Xander Gregg Portfolio. We'll see their prices go up August 1st, that's next week, in response to the tariffs being charged on imported products put into place by the Trump administration. The wholesale price on all of both brands' offerings will go up by 10%. According to an announcement by the company on Tuesday, a representative from the company told Half Wheel That it had tried to hold off on implementing them for as long as they could.

When it says Half-Wheel, say Cigar Hustler Podcast. No, we usually say Half-Wheel. It's fine. We get all our news from Half-Wheel.

It's a great news source, man. They're actual journalists. They're not hobbyists. You're quoting a primary source for the most part.

They may quote the primary source wrong, but they are a primary source. Right. 10%. Yep.

10%. 10% increase. Epic and Nat Seco. Well, here, here and again, they don't own the factories.

At least I don't think so, right? I don't think Epic does. And I don't know what their relationships are. It's easy for me to say with what I do in the industry that, hey, I'm paying whatever I'm paying, right?

I don't know what their, what their, how their, their projects were. I don't know if they buy the cigars and with the bands. I don't know if it's a one-stop shop. Right.

I know that I buy cigars. Right. And we blend cigars with them. And I pay for the cigars, so I don't have anything else that I have to pay on it other than to the cigar costs that I pay for, right?

Right. So I don't know what these guys' arrangements are. With a 10% price increase, I know what their arrangement is. Their place is a one-stop shop.

Right. And they pay the whole price and it comes in there 10%. Right. So realistically, they're probably anticipating that 19% increase to happen.

Yep. And for it to not go away. Yep. Which I think is realistic.

I think that come August 1st, you're at 19 points on the tariff from Nicaragua and it's not going away. I don't see why it would go away. There's no real negotiating point that makes a big difference for them. They don't have any leverage.

There's not anything you're going to negotiate on. You have Nicaraguan rum and you have Nicaraguan cigars. Ultimately, at the end of the day, the big Nicaraguan companies can handle the price increase with it on their end, on the MSRP. Nobody's ever stopped smoking Padrón because it went from $16 for a 64 Torpedo 10 years ago to $23.

Right. So, they're with that. Epic's Dominican, no? Might be.

That's a good point. I'm pretty sure he's Dominican. Yeah. Maybe he's got some cigars in Nicaragua.

I'm not super familiar with all of the background of his company. Right, me neither. Great guy. But 10%.

And a representative from the company told this. I wonder if it was an appointed representative or somebody who was just saying it. But 10%, I think, it's an easy way around, right? It's an easy way.

You're going to get a 10% tariff. Let's just do 10%. We don't have to deal with it. Maybe they don't have a big accounting.

Maybe they don't pay an accountant. Who knows? So 10% is going to be par for the course. You're going to see 5% to 10% on these types of things, in my opinion, just because it's easy.

Yep, absolutely. Epic is Dominican. Epic is solely Dominican. So yeah, that's even a bigger question mark there.

I'll tell you, this 770, all right? The tariff on this baby. Just you wait. Go ahead and wipe your shirt too.

I always ash on myself and no one tells me about it. I think you're probably going to need a new mic here if this is my first time doing it. There's two mics, but you're going to need another one. I think I've melted a hole in this.

You're doing a great, actually, I think that that hole was already in existence. Yeah, we have one that already has a hole. I just thought it was from the fire I've been spitting out of my mouth. It's just becoming perfect.

That would be perfect. Right. So let's move on to the EU. The EU.

European Union. The EU. They formally have unveiled massive proposed tax increase for tobacco products, what's new there, on Wednesday, July 16th, in celebration of 250 years of independence by their former people. Their former people?

They are doing some unveiled long talk proposals that would set minimum tackle rates the 27 member states of the eu included is a new minimum tax rate for the cigars that is 1092 percent more than the current floor price wow okay the rates in the formal proposal are the same as the numbers that were leaked last month so the numbers that were leaked are real increasing the minimum cigars less cigarillo tax from 12 euro per kilogram to 143 euro per kilogram or The 1,000 units. That's insane. There's a ton of numbers here that I can talk on. I think it's too much.

Nicotine pouches. They got some taxes coming. The EU, you've got a lot of things going on. Now, that's 143 euro per thousand, right?

Yeah. 12 per thousand seems like a pretty low number, right? Right. I don't know.

So that's a... Well, in comparison. So it's a 100% increase more. Yeah.

It's more than that, it's 1,000% increase, right, what we said? Yeah. But 1,000% increase on like a penny is like small. So I don't know, this is, I don't know if this is gonna destroy anything.

It seems here we got vape, vape liquid is 36 cents per milliliter, so that's going up. Do you, what do you think Palmer, do you think that it sounds like an overreach in regulation? Yes. That's it, that's all you got, yeah?

Yeah, well, I mean, they could obviously do whatever they want, but as he reads the story, there are some countries that are dropping out over this. Yeah, so that's where we're at. All 27 member countries of the EU are required to have their own tax rates at minimum rates, but many countries have higher rates already, because some already have these higher rates. The European Cigar Manufacturers Association estimates that roughly half of the member countries would not need to adjust their tax rates at all to comply with these new directives.

8%, it's not bad at all. Right. Of the retail price, or a minimum of 47 euro per thousand units. So in the case of tobacco excise duty on resources, that would mean that the member country would be required to give the EU 15% of its collected tobacco tax revenue.

If both measures were to go into effect, that would mean that the new minimum tax would be 143 per kilogram. However, the member country would only receive 85%, the other 15% would go to the EU. This proposal was very worrying. The tax increase goes to the EU.

Right. The EU. Right. European.

I like EU. And allegedly it goes against every commitment the EU executives have made recently regarding reducing the regulatory burdens for SMEs and mid-caps, which are companies that are largely dominating the cigar segment. It's opposed to other products manufactured by big tobacco. And there's an update.

We just got an update in, actually, while we're doing this. Yeah. This just in. Palmer reporting live from Sweden.

We have... Yumpen Yimini, the taxes. Well, breaking news from Sweden, I'm going to cry. Sweden has become one of the first of what will likely be many countries to oppose the 15% EU funding proposal.

Spokes was heard saying, umping yimmy. I don't even hear what he's saying. This be too much. That's what he said.

It's coming in live. What does it say? Spokes, the gentleman, Mr. Spokes, was heard saying, umping yimmy.

This be too much. That's awesome. Thank you for the live report, Mr. Spokes.

Now back to you in the studio, John. It's in Europe where they keep trying to do the tobacco-free generations. Correct. Yeah, a lot of that.

I mean, it's happening in Massachusetts too. They're always trying to run that there as well. So, you know, close to home for me, my business partners are Cigarillo manufacturers in Germany. So they're in there.

So it'll be interesting to see what their discussions are on it. The unique thing I'll tell you in Germany is they have a set retail price. So you determine what the retail price, and that's what it has to be sold for. Websites, you name it.

So they actually have some benefits, like a little Cigarillo over there, one of the ones they make, one of their, I think you might have had the chance to try one. 50, like 150 euro over there. If we were to be here in the United States, it would sell for like four US dollars. So it's three or four times more.

So I'll be interested to see how this impacts it and then how price conscious and how price sensitive those things are. But it'll be interesting to talk and see how that goes into effect, but I think there is something, I didn't see it in the news story, maybe Mr. Spokes can report back for us, but I think there's a certain number of the countries, it might need to be unanimous for those EU countries for this to pass, so I don't know where this is going, but it's supposedly going into effect on August 1st. That's pretty intense.

Okay. Is that it for the news articles? No, the news is long today, my friend. You got another one?

Los Angeles Brothers. Oh, yes. Releasing new LSU University of Florida Championship cigars. There are two new cigars in the Bocock Brothers Premium Cigar Series of Collegiate License Cigars, both celebrating recent NCAA championships.

I think it's supposed to be pronounced NCAA according to the NCAA, so I will say NCAA to annoy them. The first cigar commemorates the University of Florida's men's basketball title. I didn't even realize they won it. Me neither.

I've not paid attention to it. When did they win it? Last year, apparently. What are you looking at me for?

This year. March Madness. Yeah. LSU.

Women's basketball, man. Oh, women's basketball. No, this was, it said men's. Okay.

Women's basketball is all I've really paid attention to other than the Celtics. Really? Yeah, man. The Caitlin Clark effect.

I love the WNBA right now. It's hot, man. You're dialed in, huh? Super dialed in.

All the dunking. Paige Beckers is great. She won a championship last year. You love all the dunking?

Oh, it's great. Layups. It's epic. The me-bounce.

So the Florida Gators Manny Basketball Championship cigar, Palmer, is 6x52, Bellicoso, Mexican San Andreas rapper over Nika, Nika, blender, binder, and fillers from Honduras in Nika, MSRP of 1875. Wait, wait, he's reading what's the score. Huh? Oh, no, no, no, sorry, sorry.

He's still doing Bocock. He's still doing Bocock, sorry. Hey, Palmer, you let me do the news, okay? Yeah, sorry, sorry.

Sold in boxes at 20, Bocock Brothers says it is limited, Estimated, though it declined to say how many boxes have been made, they'll make as many as they can sell, the Florida Gators Men's Basketball Championship is a cigar already on sale and will be offered for sale directly to consumers. Didn't they win? I thought they won. By Bocock.

Who won? The Gators. They did win. They did win.

They're making a Gator cigar too. Championship cigars for the Gators. Okay, but how did the LSU get involved? They made the LSU one last year.

Ah, got it, got it, got it. So, later this month, the company released another LSU-licensed cigar, the LSU Championship Commemorative Baseball Box, celebrates the school's recent men's baseball title, uses Mexican San Andreas Rapper again, Honduran Binder, and fillers from Honduras and Nika. Okay. Aren't they the guys that love the San Andreas Rapper?

Yes. Everybody loves San Andreas right now. It's a good rapper right now, and the cost is good. Well, it's probably the most that's available as far as...

Readily available? Yeah, consistent. The new LSU branded cigars, guys, here. Scuds will be released on July 28th.

Last year, Bocock launched its first collegiate licensed cigars, starting with the LSU branded cigars. This is the second time the cigars will have an LSU brand. And the company says both cigars are made at an undisclosed factory in Honduras. Sketchy.

Sketchy. So are you excited about the Bocock, your big gator guy? No. You're not a big gator guy.

I'm excited of the concept of these. Well, these are all being made possible because of the NIL rules, so you can have projects like this, so it's been a big success for them, something's on my radar, it doesn't mean other people couldn't do this, so I've had talks on different things, so yeah, I'm excited for it, I think it's a great ability to be able to do something like this. Okay, so if you could make a cigar for any college, what college would you want to work with? One of the strongest brands in college football is Alabama.

Right. You know what? I probably could have guessed that. Yeah.

So it's one of the strongest brands. And why it's so strong is because it's so protected. Right. They're not letting anybody use the Alabama A.

I promise you that. You won't see that on any cigars. But there's ways to do it. So I think, ultimately, Alabama would probably be the best to work with.

Texas would be huge. Well, Alabama, Tennessee has a cigar game every year. They do, they do, and I know there's some people working on some projects for Alabama Style Cigars, similar type of thing like this, but the colleges that are the biggest have the most protected, so LSU's great, but it's a really strong brand, it's not Alabama, it's not Texas, so Alabama or Texas would be... Harvard?

Not a... it'd probably be challenging, yeah, probably be challenging. Alabama and Texas, you're one and two, in my opinion. Yale?

What about Yale? Yale? Eh, potentially. You could have the Ivy League series, which I think would not do bad at all.

Right. But I think there is a company called Ivy League Cigars, right? I have no idea. Palmer, go to the books.

What was the question? Is there a company called Ivy League Cigars? Gotcha. Hold on.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm excited about it. I'm not excited about the cigars. Right.

I'm excited about the concept and the marketing behind it. Right. That's a big deal for me. " Yeah, 100% it absolutely is.

Is a cigar probably going to be good or okay? Yeah, absolutely, it's got to be. But I'm not excited to smoke it by any means. I'm excited to see it.

But yeah, I'm not going to be buying any of them by any means. There is a Facebook group called Ivy League Cigars. Community dedicated to bringing the young and old cigar smokers together through one unique brand. Are you excited about them?

I mean, you're in the retail side. Is this something that resonates with your clientele? I actually had one person ask about it, but that's it. That's the extent of it.

I think it also matters what the championship's for. The first LSU-branded cigar they did was really focused around, you know, it was really heavily on football. I think the baseball series from LSU is going to have a lot less push than the football one. I mean, football is still king in college, by far, so we'll see how that goes, but yeah, I'm excited to see what other concepts they do, and they're really opening the door for this being a concept for, really, honestly, if you're trying to do this, I'll give you some advice right now, copy what they're doing, go to these people, go to these schools, they have NIL lawyers, they'll work with you, you can do it, it's not hard to do it, the hard part is barrier to getting in, you gotta have some sort of connection, you can't just do it, these guys got some serious pull, and they had And they had a lot of success with the LSU one, so it wasn't hard for them to duplicate that in a few different schools.

Right. Okay. All right, are we about to move into the half-wheel? No.

We have more in order? Florida Drops Wholesale Permit. Oh, that's right. Yeah, there's one or two more stores.

Yeah, last month Florida Department of Business Professional Regulation made a change discontinuing its cigar wholesale permit. Going forward, companies engaged in selling cigars to licensed alcohol or tobacco retailers do not have to have a permit to do so. The permit was free, anyway, you didn't have to pay for it, you just registered, but all businesses currently operating under this permit are not required to renew and maintain this permit going forward. I have no idea what that means, because you didn't pay for it, it didn't really do anything.

You had this permit, I'm assuming. I do. How does your life change? It doesn't.

The real question for me is, do I still have to report zero dollars every single quarter on my sales tax on the wholesale because that's the more tedious and irrelevant thing that we have to do on a quarterly basis. How much did you sell? Here's how much we sold in the state of Florida. How much of that was, you know, through other people that have a sales tax certificate?

All of it. So how much sales tax did you collect? Zero, right? You know, I'm more intrigued to see if that goes away.

Because it doesn't make much sense to report. Yeah, it didn't cost anything, really wasn't anything that, even if you were wholesaling, I guess you were just reporting it that there was sales and you didn't have to pay anything on it, right? Right. So, I guess this is just a sign of getting rid of things that don't need to be there, right?

Yeah, I mean, like Tennessee is similar, they don't have one, you know, do you have a wholesale license? No, we don't have one. Okay. So, it's interesting to see certain states are going in one direction and other states are going in a complete opposite direction.

I think it's a better sign of what the mentality is. Hey, let's get rid of things you don't necessarily need. Right. And then maybe eventually they get rid of something that actually benefits us and has an impact.

Right. But just to end the news segment here, because I tend to go on shows and now that I'm a co-host I get to talk a lot. Yeah. So, they asked me to do the news for anybody that's talking here and they gave me about a hundred news stories.

Did you know your news stories? No, we didn't. He just took over. You know.

He just grabbed the mic. Snatched that thing right out of my head. I thought we talked earlier when you asked me if I was fine with talking a lot. I said, yeah, let me do whatever I get to talk the most so that way it feels normal.

I thought we agreed that we were going to say that I not requested to do the news. Yeah. Oh, is that what you said? Yeah.

Oh. This last news story is something that's actually real personal to me. Okay. So, my very close friend and gentleman that worked for me for several years, and I brought into the manufacturer and brand owners, The brand side of the premium cigar business, Sean Hardiman has left Forge, Sean resigned as the national sales manager of Forge Cigar Company, I don't even need to read on this one, he was a formerly a sales division manager for Scandinavian Tobacco Group at STG, and those brands include Alec Bradley, Bolivar, Diesel, El Rey Domundo, La Gloria Cabana, we know all those, and prior to that he was with General Cigar Company as a sales manager for them, and worked his way up through the ranks.

He was there, and in 2016, when he went to SCG, and this is a cool one, in January, January 2nd of 2016, Sean Hardiman left LFD, he resigned to their Vice President of Sales, John Carney, who was me, and I congratulated him on his next step for SCG, and he had a great career there, he worked at Cigar Masters in Rhode Island, that was where I met him, and he said he was a salesman. He's been a sales manager for me at La Flor Dominicana for three or four years, did a phenomenal job, and as of right now, the sales managers for Forge are going to be reporting to Gene Richter, who is the long-time VP of Sales. So, Sean, great career in the cigar business. People always ask if they think they're coming back.

I think Sean's not. I haven't talked to him about this. I've sent him a congratulations on what's next. I think he's probably moved back to Rhode Island, and he's going to enjoy his family up there and do something locally in Rhode Island, but we'll see, but he did a great job in the business.

So did they fuel the growth by letting him go, or did he just say, "I'm done"? I think he, I think most likely, and I said I have not spoken to him, 100% I haven't. I think he just moved on. Yeah?

I think he moved on. I've been talking to him over the years, this is some insider info. " Does he have kids? No, none, no.

And he's in his, he's probably in his mid to late 30s now. So I would say he's probably just take the next step of his life to say what's going on and start dropping loads, making babies, making babies, and then being home with his family and his friends. So he had a good run, man. He was in the business for over 10 years, practically, and he had a great run over there, did a good job at Forged.

So, you know, I, my opinion, I think this is a totally a I'm, I'm moving on type of a thing. Right. Yep. Okay.

I'm going to say that he was fueled by the growth, and they removed him. That's because that's what STG does after a while. You can just ask. Well, you've got decisions to make, right?

If you want to keep playing the game, it's a big company, right? And his direct report, obviously, was Gene Richter. Gene's been there forever. What happens when Gene finally decides to retire, right?

He's probably not going to retire until he has to. He does a lot of golfing around the world. I think that's one of the more challenging parts of his career is how to fit that in every day, right? So, he's got a good job.

So, you know, Sean's probably, you know, I'm not going to wait for this guy to retire, but if he does, do I want to do this or what does it make sense? Maybe he doesn't like golf at all. He's not a golfer. He's not a golfer.

Sean, he's a massive golfer. He's a massive golfer. Oh, he's looking forward to the golfer. Great friend.

Congratulations to Sean. You know, good luck on what's next. So who do you think you think they have replace him? Nobody.

You think the position never gets filled? No, I think they got like regional people, too. I think they slowly start having the general people manage them. Right.

I don't think they absorb it because that allows them to have people. But, you know, why do you have to have multiple layers of management where ultimately at the end of the day you're managing them? And I think John D. Oliver does a lot of the back-end stuff.

That was actually where I was going. And I know John obviously really well too, and I think John does a lot of the back-end work, and he started to do a little more traveling, but really at the end of the day, you have people there to manage the business side of it, right? I don't think having, you know, you don't need Sean to go out to an event to have it be more successful, you're just there, you're helping, right? And so I think John D.

Oliver is probably going to absorb, if he hadn't already, or was the one doing a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff, keep doing what he's doing, and then you just have the general reports. From my understanding, John already had a lot of connection with a lot of the reps anyway. So that's what makes me think Sean moved on. I don't think they'd eliminate the position because they would have probably offered him something.

Maybe they did and he decided he didn't want it. But I think it was mostly his decision. Okay. All right.

I think he kind of blew over our Facebook or social media. Yeah, that was sort of in the middle. Okay. Do you want me to mention it now?

Yeah, go ahead. Okay. Okay, so one thing that we noticed on social media this week was our dear friend, Miguel Shadel of Crown Heads, who had a tumor in the past, has had a resurgence of that tumor, and he's looking for treatments to kind of handle that. So, our thoughts and our prayers go out to Miguel, and we hope that everything goes well, and that it's a speedy recovery, and that he, the tumor gets resolved.

What a, I had no idea, before he posted that, from the history, right? I'm sure there's people that knew, and you don't talk about it all the time, but man, he's been through some stuff. Shingles, guys had shingles. Yeah, well, and it's vestibular stuff, you know, he doesn't have a balance nerve, which is wild, and so, I mean, it's a lot going on in it, but what a great, what a great positive post he made about it in the picture, and it just shows you, I always wondered, You look at people, you don't necessarily know their whole story.

He has a huge loyalty to the Crown Heads people, the Orsingers, John, and Mike there. And, man, what a great pat on the back to those people, how well they've treated him. And I've had some other people that have worked for them that I know very, very well, too. And they said, these guys are just great people.

They're here to care about people. I don't think you see that as much nowadays where you have that type of confidence of, hey, my employer is going to be not just behind me but 100% behind me because that's the right thing to do other than being like, oh, my employer is going to be behind me because if they don't, they're going to get sued. These people have been doing the right thing for generations, and that's why Miguel has that loyalty to them and really wish him the best on it. But he seems to have a good mindset.

And I think the one last thing he said was, I'm still going to be out there, so in the meantime when we're doing this, I'll see you at events until we figure this thing out. So he's a great guy. He's one of the, one of the really genuine people in the business. 100%.

I couldn't agree more. Okay. And, um, Half Wheel, are we on to the ratings? What do you got next?

We're on the score, man. What's the score here? Okay. Pause it.

You don't read that. Pause it. Palmer's gonna come over and take the teleprompter away from you. Cool.

Do I get to pee? We can pause real quick if you want. Okay, yeah. Yeah, go ahead.

Go pee. We'll just let it record. I didn't realize the news was such a big part of us. Yeah.

Yeah, you did a, you did a great job. I feel like I'm on PBD right now. You are. You're Patrick Bet-David, buddy.

Minus the 250 million. Yeah, I like it. I'd have to run a freaking life insurance policy. No problem.

Thank you. I realized the teleprompter was at the wrong angle, now that it's at the right angle, I can see everything. You ingested it? Yeah.

Alright, I'm back. Okay. I see why you guys do this. This is enjoyable.

It's fun. It is the most fun of all the things that we do, I would say, throughout the week. Because for one, we're beholden to no one. We get to say whatever we want, we have no ad space where we have to kind of bend the knee or at least have that illusion where you bend the knee and yeah we enjoy each other's company so we get to kind of stop everything and talk about current events and we have a good time doing it so and then we got to get back to reality and as soon as this is done then then two days of consumption for me clipping and doing all this stuff talking about squids on AI.

We should go over that on the Patreon. We can, we can. Yeah, we can talk about it and then we'll set up a private Patreon time. We'll do like a Patreon within a Patreon.

It's like a dream within a dream from Conception. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it's perfect. Okay, ready Palmer?

Alright, you ready for what's the score? Yes. Alright John, you familiar with the game? Yes.

Okay, alright, so he's gonna give out three or four different clues and as we kind of go, he's gonna start with the title and who reviewed it on Half Wheel. And we're gonna give a review number. So I'm going to guess who reviewed it? No, no, no.

I'm going to tell you that. He's going to tell you who did it, but you're going to guess the number. I'm very familiar with the game, 100%. But we can change the number as it goes along.

As the things unfold, we get to move. Very much familiar with the game. Now you get more clues. Let's do this.

I'm in. Now, you are our guest, so you will be able to go first on every single portion of the round. I'm co-host. Yes, you're our guest co-host.

Yes, yes, yes. Make that clear. All right, first cigar. It's a Warfighter Night Shift by Patrick.

Now, this is a redo review. It was originally done in 2024. So for some reason, they redid the review a second time. The Warfighter.

Warfighter Night Shift. Night Shift? Oh. Redux, right?

Yes. By Patrick. Ooh, this is going to be tough. I'm going 87.

Ooh. Great number. Fuck. I'm a clock 86.

All right. Here's the details about the cigar. 50, it was released in July of 2024, they only smoked one cigar for the Redux. One Cigar Smoke for the Redux.

82. 82. So fast. It moves down to 82.

I'm going to stick 86. Nothing is different for me. Ecuador and Habano Escudo is usually a good wrapper. Candela is probably going to botch that.

And then Indonesia Binder means nothing as far as this particular company. So, all right. 86. All right.

Clue number one. While still in the cellophane and admittedly without all my office lights, All my office lights turned on. I don't see the Candela Strip on the Warfighter Night Shift. Okay, 81.

81. Damn, these are going super low. I'm going to move to 85. All right, clue number two.

I was expecting a bit more of that in the first puffs, but instead, I am greeted with a light tabano flavor formed by some mellow firewood and black pepper. I'm moving back to 83. It's boring, but there is flavor. " That tends to be a pleasant thing, okay?

I'm gonna stick 85. All right, 82, 85? Is that where we're at? 83, I'm back at 83.

All right, 83, okay. Construction is essentially perfect, as I didn't have to touch up the cigar, and I don't have any spots where it fell short. Well, that doesn't mean anything with half-wheel. Yeah, I'm sticking with 83.

I think that it has a difference. I think I'm going to go 86. All right, here are the final thoughts. This is a very one-sided final thought.

Okay. I had high praise for the Warfighter Night Shift when it came out. And a year later, that remains the case. Uh-oh.

As I said a year ago, there is rarely, if ever, a point where any puff is not enjoyable. The Habano profile is present, but not formula-matic. The blend does a great job keeping the flavor evolving so that no one expression settles in for too long. The construction is also fantastic and as good as I've had from a cigar lately.

After a year of rest, the Warfighter Night Shift continues to get my praise and recommendation. Wow. See, I've seen stuff before, though, where they say things like that, and it's perfect, and it's like 82. Yeah.

And then there's a cigar that's like, hey, they had this problem, had this, and it's a 91, 'cause it said Padrón on it or something. Yep. Or Davidoff is usually what it says. Man.

I'm gonna go way back up now. Let's go 88. I'm going to go 90. 90.

Yeah. 94. 94! Wow!

Incredible. That's going to be top 25, top cigar of the year for those guys. Well, that was 2024, right? Was it on that list then?

No, this is the new one. This is the new one. They originally did it in 24. This is the second time.

Oh, the Redux. The Redux. You said 90, huh? Yeah.

So, he got the closest. So, he got half a point. So, I got a half a point. That's going to be one of the highest rated cigars ever on Half Wheel.

Yeah, 95 is the highest, 95 is the highest I've ever done, this is the second highest rated cigar ever, it's the Warfighter, wow, the guys at Warfighter are great guys, made by Esteban Carreras, interesting, yeah, 94, hey, great for them, man, congratulations, great dudes, and that's super impressive, that's, 94 is a monster, I gotta try that cigar, yeah, now we gotta get those, yeah, 94, I wonder if I can get them from Esteban Carreras, Tell them that you'd like to take the blend, tell them you'd like the certain blend, you want to do a special cigar. What I'm thinking is an Ecuador and Habano Oscuro, Candela, Barber Pole with Indonesian binder and Nika fillers. Oh, what a great idea. 94, man, that's a must-smoke cigar then.

Yes, but now it's a Patrick 94. It's not a Charlie 94. A Charlie 94 means the cigar is absolutely perfect, right? So, all right.

He said every puff was enjoyable, so we got to, honestly, got to get my hands on that. Yeah, got to try it. Yep. Warfighter, what's it called again?

Palmer? I got to go back to the beginning. Okay. The Warfight Night Stalker, I think.

The Night, yeah. Yeah. Night Stalker. All right, awesome.

Wow. Warfighter Night Shift. Night Shift. Okay.

All right, hold on, I got to go back. Or Night Stalker, you know. Night Stalker, that might have been a Freudian slip. Yeah.

On my end. I might have said something I shouldn't have. Oh, boy. All right.

Ready for the next cigar? Guess we know what the blend's gonna be. This is the one chosen for our special co-host today. Aha.

It's a La Flor Dominicana TAA 2012 Airbender Maduro Torpedo. Okay. Now you should have a leg up on this. Should.

Was this review was done when? 2012. The review was done then? Yep.

The TAA Airbender Maduro? Yes. Torpedo. Torpedo.

By LFT. Have you ever heard of LFT? Yeah. Yeah?

Brazilian Rapper. Hadn't that one. Had a Brazilian Rapper. Who was it reviewed by?

It doesn't say. Maybe it didn't say. This is one of the older ones. Okay.

I tried to get out of the Stogie. Check the grammar. Is the grammar appropriate? Yes, it appears to be English.

Probably Patrick. Ninety-one. I'm going to say 90. Alright, Country of Origin, Dominican Republic, Factory Tablet Calera, La Flora, SA, Wrapper, Brazilian Habano, Binder, Dominican Republic, Filler, Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua, Size is 6 1/4, Ring Gauge 54, it's a Torpedo, sells for $10 back in 2012, number of cigars smoked for the review, 2.

Ooh, only two. Okay. TAA, it's hard to get. I'm still sticking with 91.

Yeah, I'm gonna roll, I'm gonna stick with 90. Alright, the LFD TAA creation is extremely striking to look at with a dark brown and black wrapper that looks like it was dipped in oil. Okay. I've read this review a hundred times, it was either an 89 or 91 in my opinion, I think, I could be wrong, but I'm sticking with 91.

This was one of the cigars that Tony and I had always talked about, like, that had a lot of attention behind it, Airbender Maduro, Torpedo, that and the double-press Maduro that we did for that, so it was always those two that we talked about, so they were, there's reasons why, I'm sticking with 91. Okay, damn. All right, well, I'm going to roll 90. All right, I'm getting just a bit of black pepper on the retrohale, but not in the mouth or on the lips.

So where does the pepper come from, then? Black pepper on the retrohale, so in the nose? It must be in the nose. Yeah, just on the retro.

It could be an 87 that it got to, 87, 89, or 91. I'm going to go, I'm going to stick with 91, because if I switch now, and it was like an 89 or something, or if it was a 91, I switched. I'm gonna go 91 still. Okay.

This might have been rated in their top list at the end of the year at one point in time too. In 2012. Let's see, what was I doing? I wasn't paying attention.

They were also rating much higher back then. They, in like 2015, I think, or '16, they got much more, not just transparent with the scores, but they like rolled out a system. Right. So if somebody talks shit about their score, that's why What's the Score is great for this, because they got a real system.

Right. So yeah, 91, I'm sticking with it. Okay, so it's black pepper, but it's undertones of it, so it's not overbearing, but it's notable, yeah, I think I gotta stick 90, I think I gotta stick 90. Give me some bad news so I can adjust.

Construction remains excellent until the end of the smoke. That doesn't mean much. Do I ride with the 91 or go with the 89? Let's go 89.

Oh, fuck. I was gonna move to 89. Okay, I guess I'm gonna stay at 90 for the time being. All right, final thoughts.

While I enjoyed the dark, heavy, and slightly sweet profile of the La Flor Dominicana TAA 2012 Airbender Maduro Torpedo, the lack of complexity in the blend really took my enthusiasm down a notch. Having said that, overall construction was wonderful. It was wonderful for the most part. There was quite a bit of smoke production, and unlike most of Lido Sticks, the strength was not overwhelming at all and actually worked in harmony with the blend.

The profile is right down my alley, but honestly, I would rather pay more to get one of the Small Batch No. 4 or the new Small Batch No. 4, Oscuro. Yeah, Small Batch was amazing.

83. I'm going to move to 88. I kind of remember being offended when the score came out, so I'm going to go 83. Okay.

83. Wow. Dropped it on you. 100% perfect.

I may or may not have known. I might have been gaming you. Oh, I like that. The more you read stuff, I didn't know the exact score.

I knew kind of some things. I know scores they'd given. Right. The more you read things, the more it went into my head of me reading it and thinking.

And then, yeah, so 83, I nailed it. Pulled the 83. That was a low score. Got to give him credit.

I tried to go back far enough before he was there. Yeah. I was there in 2012. Nicely done.

It had to be in the beginning, though. Nicely done. It was my second year. We gave you a leg up on that one, so if I'd have beat you on that.

Oh, yeah. If I'm going to win something, I got to win what I did for 15 years. I should be getting that, right? Absolutely.

There you go, LFD. Bam. Boom. 83.

I knew it. Dude, that thing, that score in my head, I think that probably made me angry for 10 years. That is a low score. Yeah, oh yeah.

Yeah, I was a little assaulted by it, at the time, I'm no longer assaulted by it, but it's still in my brain, but yeah, 83, nail it, boom. Nice. Okay, anything else Palmer? You gotta listen to the week, Michael?

Yeah. Who's listening to the week? Miguel Chadell. Oh, excellent, Miguel Chadell.

Yeah. In honor of his current triumphs, because he's gonna go through this, he's gonna beat it, and we all believe in him, so. All right, Chap of the Week, Old Time Cigars, Castleberry and Claremont, and Claremont I'll be doing a Cutting Light on August 13th. Excellent.

From 11 to 3. Yes, our local friends, Old Times. So the Cutting Light's going on this weekend? Yes.

With? What are they cutting and lighting? Pustania. Oh, Pustania?

Yeah. Oh, phenomenal. Yeah. I thought it was just a random Cutting Light.

No, it's a Cutting Light. Oh, Pustania, so you're doing the Castleberry store? He's doing Claremont. No, it's in August.

It's in August. August 13th. Oh, August 13th. Not this weekend.

Oh, not this weekend. Not this weekend. But you're doing the Castleberry store. Yes.

No, no, no. The Claremont. Claremont. Oh, excellent.

Claremont. They got three locations, right? Two. Two?

They sold the third one. They did it. Where was the third one? It was out towards Leesburg.

Leesburg, yeah, yeah. Man, they're doing a good, I mean, a staple here in Central Florida, right? Their social media posts have skyrocketed. Jonathan's doing a great job.

Fantastic. And his dad's hilarious. Yes. And the dad joke segments are epic.

Absolutely. And I don't know why, but it seems like this just kind of happened in the last like eight months to a year, and Jonathan's really just, like really, he's always been involved in the business, but it seems like he's just heavily more involved in renoing the stores. Yeah, it does. It seems like he's stepped up more.

It seems like his dad is passing the reins. Yeah, and it seems probably like he, they probably sat down and made a decision, it was like, this is 100% what I want to do now, and his dad's at the point where this is what I want. I also want to 100% have you do more of this. Right.

And it was, usually when things happen like that, you see big changes. I remember to LFD, when Tony had committed to moving to the Dominican Republic, the factory expansion hit, like, instantly, and it would turn into this beautiful oasis of a cigar factory, and it's, you know, Lito started investing more and more, because when you know the next generation's involved, you go into the bank account and try to make it as best as you can for them. Right. And they've really, they've really already had a great, they have great cigar selection, I mean, they got probably the second largest cigar selection in Central Florida, and it's a lot of cigars, man.

Yep. And yeah, just doing great, man, so yeah, old times, congratulations on that, that'll be great, and I'm sure there'll be some great dad jokes told. Yep. Do you have any cutting lights or any events coming up that you want to plug?

I got tons of stuff, man. I got July 31st, Bentley Cigars and Hooten Young Whiskey at Red Foam Booth in Miami. Okay. I've got Winter Park, Florida, The Good Pour.

Okay. I've got their grand opening at their new location. It's a liquor store chain that gives money back to the community. They are doing a grand opening, so that's on August 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th.

We'll be there with Hooten Young Whiskey. And then August 21st, we've got a Hooten Young Bourbon, Bottle and Bond Bourbon Lunch at Cigars on the Avenue. Nice. Of course, my home away from home because it's right next to my house.

Yes. And so that's going on the 21st. We'll have our whiskey smuggler truck there and all the whiskey, all the bourbon, all the cigars. Norm Hooten will be down for that, so that'll be fun.

Bentley events, I've got, man, I think I'm done with Bentley in August, I don't have much going on as I did, I kind of did a tour around Central Florida, the reason why I'm focused in Central Florida here for the next few months is that my sons do in the next few weeks, and it kind of worked out well with Hooten Young, they launched their bourbon the first week of July, born on the first of July, 4th of July, and there's just a big push, so all of these things I'm doing are within a half hour of the week. And it just worked out like it was supposed to. That's fantastic. So yeah, so that was great.

So yeah, I got a lot going on. It'll be a lot of Hooten Young whiskey stuff, and then Hooten Young cigars, and then you'll start to ramp up Bentley in September. I got a ton of stuff in September. I'm going to Germany.

I've got three events. We've got the two guys, the number two podcast, right? Yeah, number two. Number two, we got their 40th anniversary in September.

So I've got like six Bentley things in September. So it'll be, September will be very heavy Bentley and also heavy Hooten Young. It's also Heavy Hoot & Young, so we're kind of getting a rhythm, but this month, August, is focused just central to my house, which is great. All right, Palmer, anything else to add?

Next week, we are interviewing Sean Mobley from Cigar TV. We are, and we are going to release our Jeremiah Mirfel interview. Oh, that's right, we didn't talk about that because we talked about it on the show yesterday and we didn't do it. We did a really good interview with Jeremiah Mirfel, and that'll be coming up later on this week as well.

You got a name, Michael? We need one more name. Yes. Thank God.

Thank God for Palmer. You know, Tara De Rico. Ooh. Congratulations, Tara.

Congratulations, Tara. Yes. All right. What did she win?

I can't say. Oh, they find out. That's part of the thing. They had to know beforehand.

It's part of the... I have this whole thing. Okay. Yeah.

You have to be part of the Postana Mafia in the Facebook groups. I've got to be a little more active. Everything's kind of linked, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Congratulations, Tara. Yeah. Miguel Chadell, the listener of the week. Yeah.

What was our other name that we had before? I'm not going to say it. We already said it before. We already said it before.

Yeah, they got to find it. Oh, in the show. Yes. Oh, wow.

Yeah. But, you know what? Congratulations to you for sitting in. Thank you so much for sitting in.

It's a pleasure. You're a fantastic co-host. You did a great job. You did a great job reading the news.

Thank you. You know, Palmer, you might be out of a job here. What do you think? Come back anytime.

Come back anytime. I'd be happy. I got a lot of availability over the next month or so. I know it's going to be crazy with the kid, but I don't mind coming back.

I appreciate the invite. Honey, I gotta go. I gotta go. I gotta do this podcast.

You gotta do the podcast. I gotta go. I've dreamed about this for my entire life. I was a co-host on another show.

We didn't prepare this well. Yes. And it was nice to be here. Now, you guys do a great job, and it was phenomenal, and I'll always be happy to read the news, whatever allows me to keep talking.

There you go. Thanks for everything, and the listeners, it was great, and glad to be part of the team. Yep, thanks guys, and listen to the next couple of shows, take care, bye. Welcome to the Cigar Hustler Podcast, the show brought to you commercial-free.

But a massive shout-out to our amazing patrons on the Patreon. Thanks to your unwavering support, we're able to do unfiltered, unbiased opinions. All things cigars, personalities in the cigar world. Your backing makes it possible for us to keep it real for our listeners.

Cheers to you. com and search the Cigar Hustler Podcast.

Show Notes

In the news on today’s show: The world mourns the loss of rock legend Ozzy Osbourne, Florida teens take stupidity to a new level with the 'door kick challenge,' and Ring camera users panic over suspicious logins. We break it all down.

Plus—cigar prices are going up, and we’ll tell you why. Ashton, Epic, and Nat Cicco are reacting to new tariffs thi week, and the EU is trying to torch the whole industry with a massive tax hike.

We’ve got Bocock’s new championship smokes, a big change in Florida’s wholesale rules, and we play what’s the score with the Warfighter Night Shift and a special cigar for our guest co-host!