What the numbers don't tell you.

Every tin in the ledger was dated twice: once by the house that made it, and once by whoever wrote the entry. The second date is easy. The first one is detective work.

The code is rarely on the front label. Look on the bottom rim, inside the lid, under the tax stamp, or along the seam of the tin. It is usually stamped in ink that fades faster than the tobacco does — which is why the archive photographs the bottom of every tin in daylight before it is shelved.

Over forty years the Ledger Circle has reduced dozens of house codes to one shorthand. Read it as: month letter, lot number, two-digit year. A code of A3-14 means January, lot 3, 2014. Houses differ — some use the letter for the shift, some count weeks, some print nothing at all — so the archive keeps the original code in the record and translates it only when the pattern is certain.

Code	Month	Lot	Year	Read as
A3-14	January	3	2014	January 2014
B11-19	February	11	2019	February 2019
C7-03	March	7	2003	March 2003
K2-96	November	2	1996	November 1996

The same discipline applies to the blend itself. A house may change a component without changing the name; a tin from 1985 can smoke nothing like one from 2015. The ledger records both, side by side, because a price without its date is only half a fact.

Four things move a sealed tin's reference value: how much of it exists, whether it is still sealed, where it has been, and how many people are looking for it. Age alone is not one of them — age is only the clock that lets the other four work.

Supply. When a house closes, changes hands or loses a leaf supplier, the last tins become finite. The Barbary Coast Balkan is the archive's favourite example: discontinued in 2019, it now trades as a reference piece rather than a retail product.

Seal. A tin that has never been opened is worth more than one that has, but only if the seal held. Rust at the rim, a bulging lid or a dry rattle are all reasons a number goes down, not up.

Provenance. A tin with the shop's own price sticker and a dated receipt tells a better story than a bare tin from an auction lot. The archive records provenance in the same field as the price.

Demand. The circle of collectors who remember a blend is finite too. When the people who miss it stop buying, the number usually settles.

The reference value printed on each tin page is the median of the last three to five verified retail or private transfers, rounded to the dollar, with the date beside it. When only one transfer exists, the number carries a note. When none exists, the archive says “no verified reference” rather than inventing one.

Year	Reference value	Note
2014	$60	First recorded private transfer
2017	$95	Two tins sold in the same month
2020	$130	Sealed stock thins out
2022	$160	Walt's death noted in the press
2024	$185	Last verified transfer

Founder's Reserve 1978 — reference path, 2014–2024

A blend is a chord, not a single note. The families below are the notes most often used; the proportions and the cut are the arrangement, and no two houses arrange them the same way.

Family	What it brings	Role in the blend
Virginia	Bread, hay, citrus; dark fruit as it ages	The base of most blends; sweet and patient
Burley	Nuts, cocoa, dry earth; absorbs toppings well	Body and structure; the canvas for aromatics
Oriental	Cedar, resin, dried fruit, a little incense	Spice and lift; small amounts go a long way
Latakia	Campfire, leather, tar, smoked plum	Condiment; the backbone of English and Balkan blends
Perique	Black pepper, fig, fermented fruit	Condiment; adds depth and a peppery finish
Dark fired	Hickory, earth, strength, a long finish	Body; often pressed into plug or flake

Cut matters as much as content. A flake is pressed and sliced, so it burns slowly and rewards patience; ribbon is loose and forgiving; a plug must be sliced and rubbed; ready-rubbed is the house's own answer to “I don't want to think about it.” Two blends with the same recipe can smoke differently on cut alone.

The tin note — what you smell when the lid comes off — is not the smoke. A blend that smells of vanilla and figs can smoke dry and ashy; a plain hay-and-bread note can open into stewed fruit halfway down the bowl. The archive's notes describe both, and marks where the two disagree.

The archive keeps its tins in a dark cupboard at roughly 18°C and 65–70% relative humidity. That is the whole trick: steady, dark, not too dry. The rest is bookkeeping.

• Keep sealed tins sealed. A factory seal is the best storage you will ever have. Every time you open a tin to look, you trade a little of its future for a little of its present.
• Once open, jar it. Move the tobacco into a clean glass jar with a fitted lid, label the jar with the date it was opened, and keep it out of the sun.
• Steady beats perfect. A cupboard that swings between hot and cold is worse than a slightly warm room that never changes. Keep tins away from radiators, windows and the kitchen stove.
• Don't freeze. Freezing stops the aging you were counting on and introduces moisture problems when the tin comes back up to room temperature.
• Check monthly. White or grey fuzz, a sour smell or a tin that has gone soft are all reasons to set it aside. A little sugar bloom on the leaf is not the same thing as mould; when in doubt, don't smoke it.
• Write it down. The date you bought it, the date you opened it, what it smelled like, what it tasted like. A cabinet without notes is just a cupboard.

The archive is not a storage clinic. It is a ledger. But a note about a tin that went dry is still worth keeping — the next collector will thank you for it.