Cigars are only as rare as the manufacturer wants them to be. When you buy them, you only reinforce their behavior.
Doc.
That's true in a sense -- there are really two ways they can go about it. They can start with a target production level, and choose the tobacco they want to use based on whatever supply meets their goal. This results in a cigar that can meet production target goals, but the blend is determined by practical concerns.
Another way they can go about it is they pick the tobaccos they want to use -- some of which may be in extremely short supply -- and determine how many cigars they can produce based on the supply of these chosen tobaccos. This results in a cigar that has limited or even uncertain production levels, but is driven by the desired blend.
Most cigar makers do both. They have production cigars to be mass produced, with ample tobacco supply, and they also have limited releases that are truly limited by how much tobacco is available.
What some tobacco manufacturers do is they stockpile various tobaccos in reserve quantities to keep the production pipelines humming, and the blends consistent. They halt cigar production when these reserves get too low, and resume it once they have topped off the supply. This is necessary to preserve the blend, which is very difficult to maintain year over year.
But for limited run productions, they just make the cigar until they run out of the tobacco. Litto Gomez, for instance, can't make the Limitado I's anymore. Many of the tobaccos that went into it are simply gone; same with the Small Batch #1.
You can argue that they should never make a cigar that won't reach certain production levels, but that's really an arbitrary choice on your part.
