There’s a lie we’re told pretty early on in life. Something about how newer is better. Upgrade the phone. Buy the latest model. Get the freshest thing off the shelf. Marketers have spent decades convincing us that the shiniest and most recent version of anything is automatically the best version of it.
But there’s a category of things in this world where that logic completely falls apart. Where age isn’t a flaw to be apologised for, but the whole point. Where patience is the actual ingredient that separates the mediocre from the magnificent.
Cigars, cars, guitars and men. Let’s talk about all four.
Cigars: The Long Game in a Wrapper
A freshly rolled cigar isn’t a finished product. It’s a promise.
The tobacco inside needs time to marry. The oils need to redistribute. The harshness needs to settle down and the complexity needs to develop. A cigar that’s been aged properly, whether in a cedar-lined humidor or in the factory’s own aging rooms, smokes completely differently from one that came straight off the production line last Tuesday.
There’s a reason serious aficionados buy cigars and sit on them for years. A Dominican Puro that’s been resting for five years will have lost most of its ammonia sharpness and developed a creaminess and depth that the fresh version simply cannot replicate. Vintage Cubans from the 1990s trade at extraordinary premiums not because of nostalgia, but because the tobacco genuinely smokes better now than it did when it was first rolled.
This isn’t mysticism. It’s chemistry. The fermentation process continues slowly inside a properly stored cigar, and the results are measurable in the flavour and draw of the finished product.
The lesson here is one that runs against everything modern consumer culture tells us: sometimes the right thing to do is buy something good and then leave it alone.
Cars: When They Stopped Making Them Like That
There is a specific kind of magic that happens to a well-built car somewhere around its 25th birthday.
First, it becomes eligible for historic registration in most Australian states, which is a practical benefit that saves money. But something more interesting also happens around that same time. The market reassesses it. The car that was once just a used car becomes a collectible. The one that was depreciated into near-worthlessness starts climbing back up.
Think about what a 1970s Ford Falcon XA GT coupe is worth today compared to what it could be had for in 1995. Or a BA Falcon XR8 that sat unloved in driveways for a decade before enthusiasts started recognising how good the supercharged Barra actually was. Or early 2000s Japanese sports cars, the R34 Skylines, the FD RX-7s, cars that were almost given away in the late 2000s and now trade at prices that would make your eyes water.
Age does something interesting to a car’s reputation. The temporary flaws, the early model quirks, the things motoring journalists knocked it for in contemporary reviews, all of that gets filtered out by time. What remains is the essential character of the machine. And if that character was genuinely good, the world eventually figures it out.
A well-maintained classic car with patina earned through actual use tells a story that no showroom model ever can. It has history. It has proof of life. And in many cases, the engineering underneath is more honest and more engaging than anything being built today with a screen where the dashboard used to be.
