Smoking hot deal

Half-smoked Winston Churchill cigar sells for $12,000

Anonymous Florida collector buys 10-centimeter cigar (partially) enjoyed 70 years ago by British PM during trip to Paris

By AP 15 October 2017, 7:23 pm Edit

This auction item is a cigar once smoked by then-British prime minister Winston Churchill. Churchill's half-smoked cigar, from a 1947 trip to Paris, sold for just over $12,000 during an online auction. (RR Auction photo via AP)

BOSTON — A cigar half-smoked by British prime minister Winston Churchill during a 1947 trip to Paris has sold for just over $12,000 during an online auction.

Boston-based RR Auction says the 10-centimeter (4-inch) cigar was bought Wednesday evening by a collector from Palm Beach, Florida. The buyer’s name wasn’t released.

The auction company says Churchill smoked the cigar on May 11, 1947, at Le Bourget Airport. Included in the auction was a photo signed by the prime minister that shows him with the cigar in his hand at the airport.

RR Auction says a British airman, Cpl. William Alan Turner, kept the cigar after his crew flew Churchill and his wife to and from Paris.

The label on the La Corona cigar from Havana, Cuba, includes Churchill’s name.