That's a good start. All current production Cohibas should have the raised gold letters. Even if those ones did come from a box that used the previous style labels, there are still a number of things that just jump out as being wrong.
- The number of rows of squares above the word Cohiba is the first thing I always notice other than the gold lettering.
- There shouldn't be so much black space above the top row of squares to the edge of the band.
- There's too much white space around the word Cohiba.
- The yellow color is too bright, should be a bit more orangey than canary. Although the current style bands are more yellow than the old ones. Never the tone of these ones though. Just too bright.
- The paper has no gloss to it, and pretty much every cigar band I've ever seen has some sheen to it.
- The "La Habana" font is wrong (especially the H), and the spacing of those words isn't right, and the comma is in the wrong place.
- The portion of yellow band where La Habana is written should be wider, a bit wider than the size of the white box around Cohiba.
- You can also see that the end of the band is on the side of the cigar, and it should always be on the "back", or opposite to the center of the front of the band, so opposite the center of the word Cohiba in this case.
Current Production Cohiba BandBand these are maybe trying to beOther things from looking at the picture is the placement of the band. It's too high up, but that could have moved at some point so not definitive, but the sort of thing that should immediately make you look closer.
Moving on to the cigar itself, without having it my hand, the proportions look off for being a robusto as well. Could just be the angle of the photo though.
You still have these, so if you feel like doing an experiment we can analyze a bit more. Slip one of the bands off without tearing it. Flatten the cylinder out, and measure it along the long side in 64ths of an inch. Plug that result into: (result/pi)*2 = ?? and that will tell us the ring gauge, which should be 50 for a robusto. It should also be 5 inches long, so measure that to. Aged cigars will shrink a bit, so the length might not be exact, but if it's off by too much then you have another reason to question. That shrinking is why we use the band to determine RG since it stays the same size.
Then there's just the quality of the wrapper. Cohibas are the Cuban flagship brand. They're made with the best quality inputs, and by the most skilled rollers. You'd never see a real Cohiba with that rough of a wrapper. Cohibas mostly all have a triple cap at the head as well, that or a pigtail, these have neither.
Looking at boxes can be less reliable. It's easy to find real boxes, I've got about 20 sitting on a shelf right next to me lol. Warranty stickers can be a very reliable indicator. Sometimes you see these practically neon green ones that are pretty funny.
Check out this site:
http://www.cubancigarwebsite.com/index.htm it's one of the best resources there is for information about sizes, pictures of bands, packaging, the whole deal. It's got photos of virtually everything, and is kept quite up to date.
At the end of the day I'd really just advise against buying cigars in Mexico. Everyone I know who travels there just brings their own, as it's just not worth the trouble trying to find legit ones. Which isn't even to say those wouldn't be ok smokes, they just aren't what they're claiming to be.