Should inner cardboard boxes have a UV coat of arms on the seal? Siglo III

[tbabes]

I purchased two 5x5 boxes of Siglo III, with an Oct 23 Box date. The outer boxes both have a UV coat of arms on the seal, but most of the inner boxes of 5 do not have the UV coat of arms on the seal. I added a photo for reference. Only the 1 box has the UV seal, and yes I took the individual boxes out an inspected them. 

All of my other Cohiba inner boxes (only a handful) have the UV coat of arms. 

Thoughts?

[ha_banos]

There is a thread about this back in 2023 funnily enough. I don't think it was completely understood what was going on. There's certainly UV on 2024+ boxes. 

You didn't get them from here then.

 

[tbabes]

Thanks for the info! I bought them from a “trusted vendor” but now I’m regretting it. I haven’t come across any inner boxes without the UV coat of arms on the seal before these. Although the post you shared states pretty bluntly that the UV features are going away. Cuba!

[FireDigger]

Yes, lots of commotion about a particular vendor on Reddit. Rob and gang, get ready for some new patrons!

[MrFolgers]

3 hours ago, FireDigger said:

Yes, lots of commotion about a particular vendor on Reddit. Rob and gang, get ready for some new patrons!

Amateur hour over there. Both them and the vendors response. 

[Cestis4]

Saw this on Reddit! Good question! 

[unaslob]

39 minutes ago, MrFolgers said:

Amateur hour over there. Both them and the vendors response. 

Agree. Actually surprised by vendors tantrum like response. Got to rise above it. Did you see pics of the fakes? Like the Cancun guy selling on the beach fakes. A sophisticated fake operation won’t try pass those turds off. Plus if someone going to pass some fakes they are going to pass a lot of fakes so more will show up all over. If you sold hundreds of Siglos why only send ~10 fake sticks out? The whole thing is silly. 

[BlueWS]

I'm done arguing with reddit morons so I'll put it on here. Do you guys really think those Slavs (I can say that being Slavic myself) inspected every single Siglo carton they put on sale? They claim 1,300 sold. 6,500 sticks. They inspected every one? Dubious at best. Do you think someone could have swapped out a few and put fakes back in those Siglo boxes before they even got to the vendor (or obviously at the vendor themselves)? It was all handled in poor taste on both sides, but it sure seems like a CYA by the vendor. Refund the guy all his money for 50 cigars (not all were fakes), deny everything, go on the offensive blaming the client, and move on. I'm sure they can afford to lose some reddit customers. Why refund a penny if you stand by your product? Why panic like that last night. "Tyler" hasn't logged on reddit in 6yrs on that account. It probably took them an hour just to find the password lol. So who's going to buy a box of BHK 52s then post up a side by side with a planted fake and hope for a full refund? Who wants to go first! Lol, huge mistake on their part.

[ATGroom]

22 hours ago, ha_banos said:

There is a thread about this back in 2023 funnily enough. I don't think it was completely understood what was going on. There's certainly UV on 2024+ boxes. 

I think there was either a miscommunication between Rob and PCC on this one and/or he misspoke in the FoH post. I asked him about it at the time and he was a bit vague. In any case, I have spoken to other distributors myself and we have seen what has occurred in the market since then, which is:

-There was a batch of genuine Cohiba bands around in 2023 that had no UV markings due to a factory error. The UV on Cohiba bands have never been a very reliable indicator of anything as they are often removed or covered over by the tail of the band in the factories. In any case, the 'removal' only applied to one batch and new Cohiba in the market today continues to have UV markings (mostly).

-There was never any removal of the UV on the warranty seals.

 

On 1/29/2025 at 2:27 PM, tbabes said:

Only the 1 box has the UV seal, and yes I took the individual boxes out an inspected them. 

All of my other Cohiba inner boxes (only a handful) have the UV coat of arms. 

Thoughts?

Regarding the pack seals, yes, they have always had UV fluorescent crests going back into the 2000s... and so do the ones pictured in the original post.

The centre seal has a bright green crest. On at least two of the others a faint blue crest is visible. I'm confident that if the poster had a darker room and a stronger torch, he would find a faint blue UV on all the packs.

All the packs should have a microprinted number in the centre bottom of the seal. Normally, in a display box you will find five packs with immediately sequential numbers. I'm guessing that if @tbabes looks he will find that the green one is out of sequence. Probably it was replaced in a QC inspection at some point by Habanos/distributor/retailer.

The question then becomes, are the light blue UVs a legitimate factory defect or are they a sign of a bogus seal?

I checked packs from 50 boxes. I found the faint blue UVs on 5 of them from three different vendors, including the same vendor as the original post. The other two vendors are reputable but they are known to at least dabble in grey market.

I did very close inspection on the boxes that had the UV packs, including very close analysis of their seals, bands holos, UVs etc etc. If they are fake then we have some big problems as they are serious superfakes with no other detectable flaws.

If anybody has packs with the blue UVs from a 'known good' vendor then I would very much like to hear about it. Without that there is really no way to be sure, but given the otherwise high quality of the boxes I'm leaning that they are legit.

Bear in mind, I am speaking here only of the UV on the pack seals and not on other issues with Siglo III boxes posted elsewhere.

[tbabes]

Wow, thank you so much for the detailed response. Upon closer inspection (in a dark room with my readers on) the faint blue UV coat of arms on the seal is visible. The faint blue UV is a first for me; all the other seals in my humidor have the bright green.  

[El Presidente]

18 hours ago, BlueWS said:

I'm done arguing with reddit morons so I'll put it on here. 

In future...please don't.  

 

[gormag38]

7 hours ago, ATGroom said:

If anybody has packs with the blue UVs from a 'known good' vendor then I would very much like to hear about it.

I've got some packs lying around that have long been smoked though and some more recent stock in tupper that I'll check tonight. 

[Pmo13]

20 hours ago, unaslob said:

Agree. Actually surprised by vendors tantrum like response. Got to rise above it. Did you see pics of the fakes? Like the Cancun guy selling on the beach fakes. A sophisticated fake operation won’t try pass those turds off. Plus if someone going to pass some fakes they are going to pass a lot of fakes so more will show up all over. If you sold hundreds of Siglos why only send ~10 fake sticks out? The whole thing is silly. 

I don’t think the accusation was that they were trying to pass off those disasters as legit sticks. As has always been the case from my interaction with that vendor, everything has been great. More so that wherever they sourced from, either intentionally or unintentionally injected some tainted boxes and their internal controls failed to catch it before they sent it out.

[Mamba4eva]

Something like this is never happened to me, but I’m not just going to assume the vendor did it. I have seen a lot of people pull shady shit and the individual who did the original post could be pulling a scam. Personally, I would never take that to Reddit before talking to the vendor first and looking for a solution. Just my opinion but who cares my opinion doesn’t matter.

[TacoSauce]

10 hours ago, ATGroom said:

checked packs from 50 boxes. I found...

When I go into my stash to see if I have any boxes to check, I find 2. Nice!

When Alex Groom checks his stash, he has 50 boxes! I love it! 

EDIT: I now realize that while I have two PACKS, Mr. Groom has 50 BOXES of PACKS. This makes it even better! 

 

[BlueWS]

5 hours ago, Mamba4eva said:

Something like this is never happened to me, but I’m not just going to assume the vendor did it. I have seen a lot of people pull shady shit and the individual who did the original post could be pulling a scam. Personally, I would never take that to Reddit before talking to the vendor first and looking for a solution. Just my opinion but who cares my opinion doesn’t matter.

Your opinion absolutely matters, the problem is you're being reasonable and rational saying what most of us already think and that doesn't get upvotes on reddit!

[Mamba4eva]

13 hours ago, BlueWS said:

Your opinion absolutely matters, the problem is you're being reasonable and rational saying what most of us already think and that doesn't get upvotes on reddit!

Yes my friend, I got down voted to high heaven in these but they are petulant children in that sub.

[El Presidente]

8 hours ago, Mamba4eva said:

Yes my friend, I got down voted to high heaven in these but they are petulant children in that sub.

You are new so I will cut you a break this once. 

Leave your offsite bullshit offsite. Don't walk your crap into this house. 

 

[Chibearsv]

8 hours ago, El Presidente said:

You are new so I will cut you a break this once. 

Leave your offsite bullshit offsite. Don't walk your crap into this house. 

Let @Chas.Alpha off the leash!

[El Presidente]

6 minutes ago, Chibearsv said:

Let @Chas.Alpha off the leash!

No need. 

Simply 

 

[Grimlock]

8 hours ago, El Presidente said:

You are new so I will cut you a break this once. 

Leave your offsite bullshit offsite. Don't walk your crap into this house. 

These two lines need to make their way into a movie. I can see Samuel L. Jackson saying this phrase and adding "mf'er" to the end.

[gormag38]

On 1/30/2025 at 12:10 AM, ATGroom said:

If anybody has packs with the blue UVs from a 'known good' vendor then I would very much like to hear about it.

I've found nothing but the green UV seal on my old and current packs (date range 2017-2021). The majority of these were purchased from a reputable grey market vendor, with the remainder being purchased here.

[Fugu]

On 1/30/2025 at 4:10 PM, ATGroom said:

If anybody has packs with the blue UVs from a 'known good' vendor then I would very much like to hear about it.

While very few petacas seem to wear it, the paler version should not be indicative of non-legit production. Actual visibility depends a lot on ambient lighting and which UV source you are using. With a 365-nm torch even the light version is clearly visible. On a quick searching I found some on 2015/16 production but it appears not to be attributed to a certain time period. Examples in the pic are: RG Perlas (2012), Sig III A/T (2023 – like the OPs), Mag46 A/T (2016), Favoritos (about 2014/15).

[ATGroom]

7 hours ago, Fugu said:

On a quick searching I found some on 2015/16 production but it appears not to be attributed to a certain time period. Examples in the pic are: RG Perlas (2012), Sig III A/T (2023 – like the OPs), Mag46 A/T (2016), Favoritos (about 2014/15).

The boxes I found it on ranged 18-21. Most of the packs in my collection also bias around these dates, so it doesn't really say much about the overall distribution of these seals. I found it on all different brands and factories.

I don't know, but I would guess that probably the display boxes leave the factory with the packs unsealed and the transit seal on the outer box. The packs are then inspected and sealed at the export warehouse, same as other boxes. So it would make sense that they aren't from any single factory.

Seeing them on 10% of boxes ranging between 14-21 is a bit strange though. Implies multiple batches of seals in use at the warehouse simultaneously and likely this issue was present on multiple batches of seals produced over several years.

[Fugu]

On 2/2/2025 at 9:07 AM, ATGroom said:

The boxes I found it on ranged 18-21. Most of the packs in my collection also bias around these dates, so it doesn't really say much about the overall distribution of these seals. I found it on all different brands and factories.

Up until 2022 confirmed – found it also in a Party MF 5er. A 2010 Reyes petaca is showing a faint blue-green UV coat of arms, too (much like in the large seal at / before that time), but that’s the old version w/o the hologram. Still, it seems over most of or even over the complete period of production of the hologram seal in petacas the faint blue-green version is being used on occasion.

On 2/2/2025 at 9:07 AM, ATGroom said:

I don't know, but I would guess that probably the display boxes leave the factory with the packs unsealed and the transit seal on the outer box. The packs are then inspected and sealed at the export warehouse, same as other boxes. So it would make sense that they aren't from any single factory.

Yep, one would think so. In which case one should find cut transit seals underneath intact warranty seals (can’t check this on mine as the majority of them comes already fully cut open due to the necessity to attach health warning stickers...).