Well, Day 1 of the 2018 IPCPR Convention & Trade Show is in the bag and as in years past, each of the writers will jot down some of their thoughts on a specific night about things they overheard, things they talked to people about, or things they saw. Charlie’s Day 0 Recap was published yesterday morning and mine is below.

1. Nomad Booth Stolen — Yes, Fred Rewey’s Nomad booth was stolen from the company’s Las Vegas storage unit. And yet, there was a Nomad booth this morning thanks to a lot of work putting together a brand new booth from scratch in about 24 hours.

Of course, he had some assistance, including Black Label Trading Co., who helped get Nomad’s background printed just before the show opened. Personally, I was hoping for a huge tent and fire pit—i.e. a truly nomadic theme—but the cigar community pulled together to help out a brother in need, something that is nice to see.

2. Hand Rolled Premiere — The premiere of the documentary Hand Rolled: A Film About Cigars was yesterday afternoon and by almost all accounts, the movie was a rousing success. There have been plenty of calls over the years to get a project like this up and running in order to show a different, more history/documentary centric background of the cigar industry and while

I have not seen it yet, just about every person I talked to had overwhelmingly positive things to say, especially when it came to the interviews of various icons of the industry.

3. Busy Booths — As I walked around the show floor, I was struck on just how busy some of the booths seemed to be, even when seen at multiple different times. Companies like Cornelius & Anthony, RoMa Craft Tobac and Fratello were some standouts for the smaller brands, but larger companies like Davidoff, La Flor Dominicana and Drew Estate were no slouches either, even when taking the first company’s smaller booth space into account. Yes, it is possible that it is just a combination of being the first day and the fact that the show started on a Saturday, but whatever the reason, it seemed that there was plenty of business being done.

Davidoff is the official sponsor of halfwheel's coverage of the 2018 IPCPR Convention & Trade Show.
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Brooks Whittington

I have been smoking cigars for over eight years. A documentary wedding photographer by trade, I spent seven years as a photojournalist for the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star Telegram. I started the cigar blog SmokingStogie in 2008 after realizing that there was a need for a cigar blog with better photographs and more in-depth information about each release. SmokingStogie quickly became one of the more influential cigar blogs on the internet, known for reviewing preproduction, prerelease, rare, extremely hard-to-find and expensive cigars. I am a co-founder of halfwheel and now serve as an editor for halfwheel.