Just wondering why this was such a small release? I barely managed to make a coffee and they were gone!
Yeah, I'll be honest, I wondered the same thing. But before posting I wanted to think about that question a little bit. My thoughts on that are two-fold:
1. I'm sure a large part of the reason to keep the release small is to try and make sure these cigars get into the hands of the people they are intended for: BOTL forum members who are donors to the site. If they made 500 boxes its not really a BOTL only thing anymore - lots more people would be able to get their grubby paws on them who don't really have any business with a box based on who the target audience for them was; it would just be like any other LE HTF stick out there (except even more limited and HTF) and you might as well not call it the BOTL 2013 at that rate. While I think the size for the release could've been doubled, much more than that dilutes the purpose for making the cigars in the first place.
2. At the end of the day DE is a company and this a great way to get easy marketing. It makes your company look great for doing something altruistic while simultaneously insuring that hype will build quickly based on the limited availability. Not just for the purpose of building hype mind you, but what that will lead to: lots of people on different forums talking about the brand and lots of review sites commenting and good feelings from the cigar smoking populace about DE as a whole. And IMO, those good feelings are well deserved. I'm not writing this looking a gift horse in the mouth at all, hell I think it's an awesome idea that they don't have to do for the members of this site and I think the DE people, particularly SS and JD have been awesome for the cigar community and are great BOTLs so they deserve anything and everything good that comes their way. Or maybe I'm just jaded and there is no ulterior motive. WTH do I know anyway? I'm just some dude on a forum.