Traditionally, cigar aficionados have only been able to buy cigars by the box. This created conundrums for those who love to procure a great smoke without incurring a big risk. If you splurge on a box of premium cigars, even if they're discount premium cigars, you may very well find yourself smoking the first one--only to discover that it really wasn't what you wanted. Even if it's a very good cigar (that's what "premium" means), if it's not to your taste, you've got eleven more cigars that you aren't particularly motivated to smoke, and you're out the price of an entire box.

For this reason, the idea of a premium cigar sampler has emerged in recent years--especially after the so-called "cigar boom" of the 1990s, when many new cigar aficionados discovered their love of the smoke, but lacked the deep knowledge of the various tastes and brands that are out there that comes with experience. For these new cigar lovers, it was important to try many different kinds of cigars very quickly, and that's where a sampler pack built from various premium cigars came in highly useful. Cinder-block cigar shops, as well as the newer, virtual kind, found great success with a product thus tailor-made to solve a problem that afflicts cigar aficionados.

But there was a problem, too, with the premium cigar sampler: sometimes the cigars weren't actually "premium." A common business practice was for large cigar emporiums to send out glossy, beautifully-designed catalogues, publications so nicely put-together that they looked like bridal magazines. These catalogues would offer unbelievable deals on premium cigar samplers, advertising the best brands in the world, such as Cohiba, Macunado, Romeo Y Julieta, and Gurkha, as part of "premium cigar samplers" at dirt-cheap prices. Readers wondered how a sampler filled with eighteen to twenty such fine premium cigars could go for such a low price--especially considering the cost of printing and mailing those pretty catalogues. And the answer to that question was, for buyers, rather dismaying.

Many so-called "premium cigar samplers" are nothing of the kind: they feature one, two, or even five premium cigars at most, mixed in with a liberal sampling of "cigar pawns," the ultra-cheap, sub-gas-station-quality cigars that cost cigar retailers as little as forty cents per smoke (which is the same as the number of cents that the federal cigar tax recently increased by!). The embarrassed customer opens up these long-awaited packages, only to find two or three smokeable cigars (which still may or may not be to that particular smoker's personal taste) and a dozen or more other cigars that aren't well-constructed enough to make good paperweights.

For that reason, the choose-your-own sampler was an immediate success when first introduced via the Internet in January 2007. With this simple but brilliant idea, you could order a premium cigar sampler that actually consisted of premium cigars, all of which you chose yourself, at a decidedly discount price.

But this new product, in turn, presented its own dilemma (though a much better kind): what do you do after you've filled up your cigar sampler with delicious ultra-premium cigars such as Gurkha or Partagas?

Luckily, these premium cigar samplers that truly offer discount premium cigars offer you a chance to discover daily-use cigars--the kind of premium cigar that doesn't offer the intense, once-in-a-lifetime smoking experience of the very best CAO or Cohiba cigars, but which, due to its lesser expense, makes it something you can smoke every day without over-taxing your tastebuds or your bank book.

Consider, for example, Ashton Cigars, an excellent more-recent startup that offers fine premium Nicaraguan-made smokes, and lots of them, at an excellent price. Or consider the best cigars made by countries with lesser-known cigar industries, such as Royal Jamaica Gold, the cream of Jamaica. With cigars like these in your sampler (and your humidor), you have a chance to enjoy a few of those once-in-a-while smokes that can't be afforded every day, while also discovering premium taste--at a discount budget.