Two new Lost&Found releases shipped this week to retailers, notably, in boxes.

This marks a notable change for the project, which so far has released cigars in small format, unique packaging options, largely in bundles. The change, which also includes bands, is designed to be friendlier to retailers.

“In their initial iteration, it was hard to have the cigars sold a single or two at a time,” said Robert Caldwell, one of Lost&Found’s co-founders, in an email to halfwheel. “The new approach is better because it doesn’t force the sale of an entire bundle.”

The first of these two releases is a familiar one, Backdoor Bambi.

There are roughly 200 boxes of 12 cigars. Backdoor Bambi was part of the project’s initial release, back when it was known as Impromptu. It uses corojo, habano and negrito tobaccos and was rolled in 2008. Pricing is $12 per cigar.

The second release is El Suavesito, a 5 3/4 x 45 corona that was originally rolled in 2010. It uses Dominican piloto, corojo 98 and Nicaraguan habano tobaccos. Pricing is set at $7.50 and it is limited to 650 boxes of 10 cigars.

It’s named after an ice cream truck that sells soft serve in Caldwell’s neighborhood.

Lost&Found is best known for its artwork, but the project itself is of note. The project, started by Caldwell, Tony Bellatto and Jaclyn Sears, goes into factories and purchases cigars that were previously rolled. Many of these cigars are small quantities of limited editions and other releases that have continued to age in factories. While most are difficult to pinpoint, some have been seemingly obvious like the Pepper Cream Chocolate Crush, which appeared to be the Camacho Liberty 2007.

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Charlie Minato

I am an editor and co-founder of halfwheel.com/Rueda Media, LLC. I previously co-founded and published TheCigarFeed, one of the two predecessors of halfwheel. I have written about the cigar industry for more than a decade, covering everything from product launches to regulation to M&A. In addition, I handle a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff here at halfwheel. I enjoy playing tennis, watching boxing, falling asleep to the Le Mans 24, wearing sweatshirts year-round and eating gyros. echte liebe.