A big thank you to all our customers for not taking advantage of our unplanned Wilsons give away. Due to a sequence of improbable circumstances we ended up setting the price of this product to 0.00

It would have been very easy for anybody to just clear us out but, to everyone’s credit, nobody did, and this despite some free advertising from one of our competitors.

So thanks, you are all lovely people.

@Jonny, please consider stopping carrying English snuffs in 5 g tap boxes altogether. These least airtight snuff containers is a living disaster.

That is very interesting feedback, thanks. Can you elaborate? Let me know your experience.

And anybody else, can you corroborate?

Assuming the problem is general, this is something we would definitely want to take up with the manufacturer.

It has always been this way . Tap tins , tapboxes …much the same complaint .
British snuff is waterbased(by law) and it dries out . So the small modern pockety offerings don’t stay in condition for long . It’s the nature of the beast .

Poschl can use the same basic enclosures for their products but their snuff is oil based so it stays in condition for much longer .

I don’t think this is a ‘problem’ that can be fixed . It just is . You could improve turnaround times to maintain freshness , encourage your punters to buy larger, better presented tin sizes , but that’s about it . Some people want the tactile experience of a tap dispenser .

I recently scored a J H Wilsons Med 99 twist tin . It was old stock , overly dry . but still in half decent condition . I first took this exact snuff over 40 years ago . I was feeling nostalgic …but not big money nostalgic .In this instance it was the ideal product , a little £1.50 trip down memory lane .

Pikey is absolutely correct in stating that the contents degrade quickly for the reasons given.

About fifteen years ago I was gifted tap-boxes of Samuel Gawith snuffs for Christmas. The London Brown and Black Rappee were most affected containing dried out shotgun pellets. Had I been a novice I might not have been any the wiser.

As tobacco journalists Sonia Roberts and Jacques Cole have pointed out, the tap tins or boxes were of particular appeal to the American market and also of young people in general. But unlike oil-based German snuffs water-based snuffs degrade in tap-boxes or tins much more quickly than standard tins or drums. The cheapest and best way to secure quality English snuff is to purchase drums.

However, if tap-tins sell well and you have not received any complaints then from a business point of view there is no reason to withdraw them if the demand is there. It’s just worth pointing out (especially to our overseas pals) that they might not be receiving snuff in good condition.

High-dried snuff or even SP types might be OK for a while in one of these tap-tins but the higher the moisture level the higher the degradation. Buying moist coarse snuffs in a tap-tin is most unadvisable.

I complained to Bob Gregory at Samuel Gawith about tap-boxes, pointing out the severe degradation of moist snuffs in particular. His reply was very terse saying that I was the first to complain. I suppose that if the demand was there then he saw no reason to withdraw them - even if the snuff was dried out. Sharrow might feel the same way.

FWIW I avoid tap tins and boxes where ever I can for exactly the reasons given above. McChrystal’s mini tins are better, in my opinion, if you want a small quantity to sample.

Ditto the previous remarks regarding tap tins/boxes. The first (and last) F&T taps I bought all leak a bit from the seams. You could even see this before taking off the plastic, a coating of tobacco around the edges. Unless it’s a toast, don’t bother with taps - and even those might suffer from a muted-ness due to constant exposure to air.

I have to say, the response from the competitor was very uncool and mean-spirited:

“a certain snuff company has been selling their snuff below the cost price. I guess this is a mistake, but I’m not going to tell them. I am going to tell my customers to buy as much as they can before they realise.”

I’m too new to snuff to fully understand the animosity between the two large snuff sellers, but have read enough to know that neither company came out of the whole affair looking too smart.

From a customer perspective it never looks good when a company denigrates its competitors, but I won’t go further when one party is unable to post here.

With a change in management at Mr Snuff it might be time to consign arguments to history, but then again it might not be possible to reach an accord of sorts. I’ve no idea, but I’m happy to give Jonny benefit of the doubt as he’s been true to his word thus far.

I live in a caravan in the countryside for the past 25 years . It’s all very idyllic . One of the weirder benefits of the outdoor life is the caravan keeps snuff very fresh . It must be the relative high humidity in the van because it certainly aint the temperature . I can keep cigars in my cupboards , forget snuff on the side for months …and it all stays in decent condition . Never got away with that in a house .

My oldest tapbox is a Gawith Jockey Club that slipped down the side of the fridge and languished there for years . I was fascinated how well it survived uncared for and kept it ever since . Now the label has slid off , the foil is chipping off the plastic and the scent is long gone …but it is still to this day in usable snuffing condition . It is roughly 23 years old .

I wonder how long a humidor type arrangement would extend the optimal shelf life of the British pocket snuff stock ? Or whether the little twist tins would just rust out instead ?

You could vacuum seal these 5g tap tins in plastic baggies @Jonny to ensure freshness but you’ll have to raise their prices too a bit to include the cost and hours of vacuuming them too. Vacuum seal them when you receive them all together in a big bag or each tin before shipping them to orders. Just an idea because I hear a lot of snuffers complaining for dried out 5g tins of English snuff.