Went to the Rochester event at Nice Ash last week. First time at the store. Not a bad little place. But like any cigar store in NY, prices are nuts. The Thursday thing kinda sucked. Hopefully that will change. My dad and I did the VIP ticket there. Got a deal where we got the tickets for $100 a piece instead of $150 a piece. Came with 6 free beers, 20 cigars, and a pig roast. And some other crap in a bag. The cigars were ordinary festival cigars. Nothing great. But I wasn't expecting much.
The big win for me came at the end of the night. They had a bunch of stuff they were auctioning off to benefit Veterans Outreach. They had minimum bids for everything to start it off. I wound up getting one of the pewter DE ashtrays for really cheap. Pretty cool. I was just putting my name down to start the bidding. Figured I would be outbid in no time. But I don't think that crowd rolled with DE. When I went to pay, the guy said I stole that ashtray.
That Buffalo fest sounds cool. I'll have to look a little more into it.