Original-Date: Fri, 19 Jun 1998

Geneva, Switzerland:

An Asian buyer paid 23,000 Swiss francs or about $16,400 for a box of 25 rare Cuban "Trinidad" cigars at an auction Sunday.

Auctioneers Christie's said the price of $660 per cigar set a new auction record breaking one set in May.

Trinidad cigars come from the special selection of the Cuban national factory generally reserved for heads of state and other dignitaries, Christie's said.

Neither the buyer nor the seller of the Trinidad cigars, 7.5 inches long each and packed in their original cedar box, was identified.

In his claim, the man stated that he had lost the cigars in "a series of small fires." The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason: that the man had consumed the cigars in a normal fashion. The man sued, and won.

In delivering his ruling, the judge stated that the man held a policy from the company in which it was warranted that the cigars were insurable. The company, in the policy, had also guaranteed that it would insure the cigars against fire, without defining what it considered to be "unacceptable fire," and so, the company was obligated to compensate the insured for his loss. Rather than endure a lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the judge's ruling and paid the man $15,000 for the rare cigars he had lost in "the fires."

However, shortly after the man cashed his check, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of arson. With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case used as evidence against him, the man was convicted of intentionally burning the rare cigars and sentenced to 24 consecutive one-year prison terms.

I'd like to apologize to any readers who were confused by today's humor message and thought the story about the 24 cigars was 'true'. Alert reader Jan Altman quickly wrote to inform me that the story was, in fact, a classic Urban Legend. Indeed it is, and I was aware of that before I sent it out. Unfortunately, I realized after Jan's message that my presentation wasn't entirely clear on that point, since the amusing urban legend was presented after a clipping from the Whiteboard News, which *was* an actual news story. So, for those of you who might be confused in the future, please note this: content for PackyHumor is selected on the basis of it's humor value, not it's truth. Occasionally this means a common (or uncommon) urban legend will be selected to send out, but that's because it's *funny*, not because it's *true*. On occasion I send out inspirational stories, and even less frequently I use the list as a soapbox. Except in the infrequent occasion that I'm perched on said soapbox, all stories presented in PackyHumor are assumed (by me, at least) to be fiction. As they say, any resemeblence to actual persons or events, living or dead, is purely coincidental. We now return you to your regularly scheduled program...