Virgin Mary Snus & Bucket-o-Snus

January is almost through. It’s been a tough month for snus fans. We learned Claq Qui and General Maxi are being retired. I ordered a good amount of each, and am currently using a Claq.

But there was something odd about my tin of Claq. I saw a sign. Take a look:

That’s right. The Virgin Mary appeared in my Claq Qui. I’m certain this means that God thinks it should not be discontinued…

Now if only there was a website that I could sell this on…

There is this new thing buysnus is doing, it’s an auction site where you can buy swag and snus, snusauction.com. [I'd hyperlink if it were cool or they paid me...] It’s been up for a few days and it’s basically a place to spend a lot of money on things with snus logos printed on them. I’m interested in the General Hat with the old logo on it, but it’s already too much for a beanie… and the Bulletproof is crazy, but I don’t know what it will retail for. It could be a steal.

Anyway, it’s a one-way auction. Buysnus sells, you buy. Maybe I can get them to list my special can of Claq…

Turns out the bucket-o-snus aka snusx is a v2 product. I now think it’s pretty clever, as I understand it. Let’s say you paid a weight-based tax on snus. The stuff is half water, which means you pay half your tax to buy water. Here in Texas, that’s fairly substantial. The tax is about $1.30 per ounce, but the minimum tax on any container of smokeless tobacco is $1.30 even if it’s less than an ounce. This adds $1.30 to a pack of discreet, a tin of General Mini Mint, or a tin of General Original. Since General loose is more than an ounce, it gets hit with the full tax, proportionally.

So, a solution to minimize the tax? Put all the snus into one container and take all the water out. If this is 480 portions (2 rolls), it should weigh 240 grams — about 8.5 ounces — adding $11 to the price tag here ($1.3 x 8.5 ounces). Add the water back in and it doubles your tax to $22.00 ($1.3 x 17 ounces). Now, put it into 20 separate containers of 24 grams, and you pay $26.00 ($1.3 x 20 containers of smaller than an ounce).

It’s nearly giving you a 60% tax break.

Neat, right?

Now it’s not the most attractive container… but this isn’t a big-money-baller snus.

Actually it doesn’t look half bad. Can you imagine how totally fucking stupid it would be, say, if V2 bought a farm to make snus on, discovered 100,000 shitty buckets laying around and decided to put its snus in there. Wouldn’t that just be the stupidest thing you ever heard…

Well that’s apparently the story of Gajane’s new Olde Viking — except it wasn’t a farm, it was the worst snus factory in Europe and it wasn’t a bucket, it was a hollow hockey puck. Apart from that distinction, it’s also fermented instead of pasturized and has probably the dumbest name in snusedom (until v2 goes ahead with Billionaire [please don't]).

Finally, Mrs. Snus has taken a liking to General Mini Mint. So, tragedy averted, for now.