Padron Travel Case: The Aesthetics

In my opinion, cigar accessories of this caliber should be judged on two counts: function and aesthetics. In the luxury accessories space, our tools need to fill a need as well as look and feel the part.  

When I first removed the case from it’s bag and box, the first thing that caught my eye was the 18k gold hammer.  I’ve always loved the story about The Hammer and how it enabled Jose Padron to launch a formidable cigar empire.  Paying homage to history and family in this way is pretty awesome, and that little golden hammer brings a smile to face just thinking about it. 

The leather feels quite luxurious, and is as soft and smooth as it looks.  And that dual toned leather?  Yeah, that’s the good stuff!  Both colors compliment each other nicely and have made this case the topic of a couple discussions while I was out and about.  

In addition to the gold numbering on the bottom (I received number 155 of 350), they even put 1964 in gold font on the case inserts as a neat touch.  I'm also a big fan of the cedar lining throughout.  Not sure how easy it'll be to maintain over the years, but it's undeniably beautiful!  

Aesthetically, I’ve got one complaint with Padron’s Travel Case: the seams on the back don’t line up. This could be exclusive to my experience, but it does detract from the visual representation.  Yet if I were to rank it in a list of priorities that I think most people would care about, I’d probably place it pretty low. 

Padron Travel Case: The Functionality 

I’ve had the chance to use this case exclusively for a while as my transport to and from work as well as my daily carry while in England earlier this month.  After some quick judgements from the unboxing, I wanted to make sure that I put this to use regularly and test the functionality before going off half-cocked.

The big win for this case is the humidity retention.  After testing for several days, my cigars held within one percentage point of the Boveda pack used.  That was a pretty large selling point for me, as I like to be able to pick my cigars for a few days and store ‘em in my travel bag.  This gives me the peace of mind to pack two or three cigars and forego the Boveda, which is great because there isn’t much space leftover.  

Since the case slides up and down, it works for multiple lengths of cigars without committing to a small or large case.  The downside to this, though, is that it’s possible to damage your sticks if a decent amount of downward pressure was placed on it accidentally.  Enough pressure would ultimately damage the cedar lining from other angles as well, but for some reason the closing action seems to be more plausible.  

While I love the size of this case in my hand, pocket, backpack, or laptop bag, it’s quite small when it comes to actually carrying cigars.  This is the single greatest disappointment for me, because it limits the size of cigars that you can travel with.  Or if you’re planning on picking up a few while out in town, it limits the size of your purchases.  

Those intricate inserts with golden font on them?  They’re practically useless unless you’re using one like I did to partition some of the case off for a boveda pack and sensor.  Unless, that is, you’re exclusively into smaller ring gauges like lanceros, lonsdales, and coronas.  Anything larger than 50 ring gauge runs the risk of limiting your choices to two cigars instead of three.  

As pictured above, I was only above to fit the trio of Family Reserves (6 x 52) by removing both inserts and turning the last cigar sideways.  Admittedly, this seems crazy to me considering that most of their higher end cigars are box-pressed and will need to be turned. 

Padron Travel Case: Would I Buy It Again? 

You bet your ass I would! In addition to being a functional piece of art, it’s neat to carry something that’s limited to 350 people worldwide.  Neither the seams nor the capacity of the case would stop me from buying it again, but I would’ve rather known those things up front.  If it were a little smaller and described as a 2-Finger Cigar Case, I’d consider it for the same price. 

Bottom line: if you’re hardcore Padron fan, a limited edition hunter, or accessory collector, the Padron Travel Case is a worthy quest. 

Tell Us!  What are YOUR thoughts with the Padron Travel Case?