No Castro signature on Cuban cigar humidors

HAVANA, Mar 3 (Reuters) It is the closest you get to a capitalist stock market in communist-run Cuba: dozens of wealthy merchants bidding high stakes for humidors full of premium cigars.

Cuba's annual Habanos festival ended last night with an auction of five ornate humidors of cedar and mahogany stacked with hand-rolled stogies that raised 533,000 euros for the country's health care system.

The five humidors sold like hot cakes even though, for the first time in nine years, they did not bear the signature of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who has not appeared in public since undergoing emergency surgery seven months ago.

The 80-year-old revolutionary has missed the last four annual auctions, but three of his sons attended the lavish 550 dollar a plate gala dinner for a thousand cigar aficionados and retailers from the world over.

Well-heeled cigar connoisseurs toasted to Castro's recovery from intestinal surgery that forced him to hand over power provisionally to his brother Raul Castro for the first time since Cuba's 1959 revolution.

''We hope he will sign the humidors next year,'' said 87-year-old Alejandro Robaina, Cuba's most famous tobacco planter and a legend in the cigar industry.

Missing Castro's signature, the humidor auction brought in less than the 610,000 euros made last year.

Cigar merchants were still confident they would easily sell the humidors filled with famed Montecristo, Partagas and Cohiba cigars to their best clients.

''In Hong Kong, people buy cigars like there is no tomorrow. It is full of cigar collectors,'' said Dag Holmboe, chief executive officer of Pacific Cigar Company, the exclusive distributor of Cuban cigar in the Asia Pacific region.

Owned by millionaire David Tang, the company sells 70 million dollar worth of cigars a year in Hong Kong, said Holmboe, who took home a solid cedar humidor with 160 H Upmann cigars for 33,000 euros.

Another humidor was bought for 105,000 euros by English restaurateur Sir Terence Conran, who opened a restaurant in London named after one of U S writer Ernest Hemingway's favorite bars in Havana, the Floridita.

Cuba produces one third of the 400,000 cigars sold each year in the world. Its sales grew 8 per cent to 370 million dollar in 2006, despite growing smoking bans in many countries and U S sanctions that ban Cuban cigars in the world's largest market.

REUTERS SP RN1437