Quote:
Originally Posted by T.G
I think that's either the vendors cashing in on the popularity, or just the simple laws of supply and demand or both. For the last two years, getting enough wrapper leaf has been tough due to crop issues/problems.
DE has only raised their wholesale prices by about a dollar, and that was a few years ago. 40 cents of that buck was due to S-CHIP, the rest was due to materials cost increases. A number of manufacturers have had similar price hikes for the same reasons, although whether you see them or not at your end can be tied to a number of factors, such as popularity, state taxes (we had an interesting one here in CA, state tobacco taxes actually went DOWN 14% from 47% to 33% in the last year), supply / availability, trends, etc.
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I know I'm new here at the nuthouse, but I've been around long enough to want to make sure I quote the above for truth.
The DE guys have been very open and honest with consumers about what they do and why, and they haven't raised their prices in a while. All of the increase is from vendors, and is due primarily to demand, as JD and Steve and crew refuse to rush out inferior product to keep up with the overwhelming demand. So the supply remains limited, and vendors continue to raise prices simply because they can.