John F. Kennedy Unsmoked Cuban Cigar.

KENNEDY, John F.

$8,800.00

Item Number: 140653

Rare unopened cigar given to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy by a Philippine Ambassador to the United States, handsomely presented with a portrait of Kennedy. The Coronas Alhambra cigar is mounted in a shadowbox opening and is still stored in a cellophane sheath printed in gold lettering: “Specially Made For President Kennedy.” Under its red and gold label and black band inscribed “Choicest Philippine Tobacco Sumatra Wrapper.” The 8 inch by 10 inch black and white photograph above shows President Kennedy smoking a cigar while reading the sports section of The New York Times on Saturday, August 31, 1963. The President was enjoying a few moments of leisure time aboard the Presidential yacht Honey Fitz, then floating off the coast of Hyannis Port, Massachusetts on Labor Day weekend. President John F. Kennedy had been receiving cigars as gifts from Filipino Presidents and Ambassadors since his inauguration, as revealed by material found in the collection of the JFK Presidential Library & Museum. On February 6, 1962, Kennedy ordered his head of press and fellow cigar smoker Pierre Salinger to obtain as many Cuban cigars as he could only hours before he authorized an embargo on trade between the United States and Cuba. As he recounted in Cigar Aficionado, Salinger was successful in obtaining 1,200 Cuban H. Upmann Petit Coronas, Kennedy’s favorite cigar. Despite his large collection, Kennedy was not Churchillian in his cigar smoking, he was often more interested in how the cigars he was gifted were obtained, rather than smoking them. His cigar smoking did, however, make the cigars fashionable and an essential component of White House dinner parties. In fine condition. Matted and framed. The entire piece measures 22 inches by 17 inches. Rare and desirable.

The 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963, John F. Kennedy, or JFK as he is often referred to, was the youngest person to assume the presidency by election and the youngest president at the end of his tenure. Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his foreign policy concerned communist states such as the Soviet Union and Cuba. Kennedy's administration included high tensions with communist states in the Cold War. He increased the number of American military advisers in South Vietnam. He authorized numerous operations to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro, including the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961. The following October, U.S. spy planes discovered Soviet missile bases in Cuba; the resulting period of tensions, termed the Cuban Missile Crisis, nearly resulted in the breakout of a global thermonuclear conflict. He also signed the first nuclear weapons treaty in October 1963. As a presidential couple, the Kennedys differed from the Eisenhowers by their relative youth and their relationship with the media. Historian Gil Troy has noted that in particular, they "emphasized vague appearances rather than specific accomplishments or passionate commitments" and therefore fit in well in the early 1960s' "cool, TV-oriented culture". The Kennedys were great entertainers in both the White House and "Winter White House" in Palm Beach Florida, hosting many social events that brought together the most elite figures from politics and the arts. A fashion icon of the era, Jacqueline was courted by the best fashion designers in the world, often at private parties held at the Everglades Club on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach.