Bang for Your Buck

[javajunkie]

Pimp on a budget. Chamagne dreams on a bologna diet. Lowenbroke. Be it a guilty pleasure for the tenured, or a stop gap measure while climbing up the learning curve, cost effective solutions are always a welcome thing, right? Anyone care to share their favorite cheap and tasty tobacco favorites?

 

[kashmir]

The best bang for my buck are the bulk C & D blends, starting at $32/lbs.

 

[oklansas]

House bulk blends at my local B&M are how I live big on the cheap.

 

[smith]

my new 3 faves are at or under 30 bucks a lb. peter stokkebye luxury navy flake, peter stokkebye Amsterdam, and skandinavik. sail yellow is another low cost favorite at 30/40 per pound. under 30 is hard to find.

 

[05venturer]

Butternut Burley & Carter Hall, both great smokes and around $30 a lb when bought by the pound or 14 oz tub.

 

[hedonaut]

Three Friars, Old Joe Krantz, and Luxury Navy Flake could probably sustain my pipe smoking habit for the rest of my life. Now consider something for a moment. Let's take a more expensive tobacco, such as Full Virginia Flake. $30 will get you a 250g box online. That's a little over half a pound, but let's fudge it an call it 8oz to keep it simple. A pack of mason jars is about ten bucks. If we split that box into four jars, we've paid 40 dollars for four jars that have ten extra grams a piece, and we still have 8 jars left over. If we buy 500 grams for 50 dollars or so in bulk, we've purchased more than 8 tins of FVF for 60 dollars, which is like getting two or three tins for free when we buy five. Admittedly, that Three Friars pound is buying eight tins for $40. The point is, if you make careful investments with your tobacco money, you can smoke like a pimp and spend like a pauper.

 

[thesmokindragon]

+1 w/Kashmir..some of my Favs are C&D's Star of the East, Bow-Legged Bear, Billy Budd & Night Train ::

 

[wnghanglow]

Could you tell us what type of tobacco your looking for? Just a general ideal like aromatic, English, Virginia's. Also what are some blends you have liked so far? My personal favorite and often recommended brand is hearth and Holmes, they have a bit of everything, a cheap sampler and everything can be bought in bulk *cheap* also of ordering online make sure to check the website, most offer free shipping when placing an order over 90-100 which adds to the savings! :D

 

[javajunkie]

You have a good point about hidden costs, hadonaut. Just like everything else in life, factor in ALL the variables. And Kashmir, thanks for the reminder on C&D, i just dropped a pound on my 4 Noggins order last night! o)
I know it seems silly. We should smoke to enjoy, period, without regard to cost; pursue excellence, so to speak. And, in the long run, pipe smoking is SO CHEAP for the amount of relaxation! Even a good tin, for $20, could yield how many bowls full? Saying six, that's still just over three bucks, for one hour of amazement and contentment added to my life. Totally worth it. Coming from a cigar background, dirt cheap! Even compared to a couple beers at the bar, or a movie out, dirt cheap. I think it is the lower middle class child in me, still looking to stretch his toy budget as far as it can go, in all honesty. And with a very real spectre of the Tobacopolis looming for U.S. citizens, this is not a bad idea to mull over.
Great suggestions all, with thanks, and keep'em coming! o)

 

[jbbaldwin]

I second the PS LNF, etc.
If you like the VAs, Newminster slices go for $35/lb and they're wonderful.

 

[jah76]

I'm partial to the PS bulks myself. I've been working on stocking up on my LBF and LNF.
I think it's awesome your on a budget. Just means you've got your priorities and taking care of what you need to take care of.

 

[cigrmaster]

An expensive tin of pipe tobacco is about 10 bucks. If you break it down to 4 grams per bowl it is costing you about 80 cents a bowl for a good hour and a half of pleasure. Now if you buy 5 tins of the same blend that cost will go even lower. If you buy a pound of an SG Flake for 68.00 that comes out to 60 cents a bowl. If you buy something cheaper and it only costs you 30 cents a bowl will that amount of money change your lifestyle?

 

[bobpnm]

+ 1 Harris. The price difference between good quality bulk tobacco from a vendor like 4Noggins and the heavily topped drug store tobacco is so small. When I was a cigar smoker I could easily smoke $20 a day in cigars. Smoking top shelf pipe tobacco is a bargain. 4Noggins blends are a steal!

 

[cigrmaster]

bob, I am with you in terms of how inexpensive pipe tobacco is in comparison to cigars or even cigarettes. It is the cheapest form of smoking there is and it does not cost much at all to smoke the very best. When you think of how much a cup of coffee costs at Starbucks in comparison to a tin of tobacco, if someone would cut out their one cup a day, they could spend 4 dollars a day on pipe tobacco and that 120.00 per month would be a heck of a cellar in no time at all. At 60 cents a bowl and 3 bowls a day that is 1.80 a day, less than half the price of a Starbucks coffee.

 

[javajunkie]

Hearth and Home, check!

Newminster, double check! (already have some of those coins hidden away already)

Reevaluate tins to save cost and effort of jarring, check! (excuse to buy more Escudo!)
Honestly, I am still learning, but have found that, while I dislike many aros, there are few blends I can't enjoy, thankfully. At this rate y'all will have me over twenty pounds squirreled away by years end, easy. Really, I wanted a discussion to counter all the "IT'S HERE! and now it's gone..." threads, to show novitiates like myself that there are good, simple, and readily available blends that even the cognoscenti acknowledge as valuable. Gives us something to do while dreaming of maybe seeing a tin of Esoterica in person. o)

 

[john218]

I wonder if anybody else ever did what I am doing? At any rate, it fits in with this discussion.
I wondered how many smokes I actually get out of a tin, so I started keeping a record of the pipes smoked, weight of the tobacco and duration of the smoke.
I switched to a more accurate scale last Wednesday and have smoked 7 bowls since then. They were 2 bowls of Solani Silver Flake and a bowl each of Penzance, Peretti's Royal Blend, Solani Burley Flake, Samuel Gawith FVF and Fribourg & Treyer Cut Virginia Plug. All were smoked indoors.
The average weight of the tobacco smoked was 2.4 grams and the average duration of the smoke was 69 minutes. It may vary for other smokers.
Based on my observations, I will average 20 smokes from a 50 gram tin.
Using 50 gram tins of Orlik Golden Sliced at $6.48 and Dunhill Deluxe Navy at $13.45 as examples of the lower and upper price levels for tinned tobacco, the cost would range from 32 cents to 67 cents per smoke.
Yyou can convert bulk blends from ounces to grams and divide that sum by 2.4, to calculate how many smokes they will provide.

 

[trailspike48]

I haven't bothered with the math, but I can buy a pound each of my three favorites at 4noggins, and I still have to buy a couple of other items to get free shipping. This allows me to keep trying new tobacco while storing up on my favorites. I choose to be a pipe smoker, I am glad I can enjoy this hobby in a very affordable manner.

 

[brassonly]

I still am amazed at the great price I get for one of my favourite tobaccos. I can get 1 pound of Lane's 1Q from Smokingpipes for $26.55. To me thats a great price for a great tasting tobacco.