Re: [CR]Confente "Scam" ends

(Example: Production Builders:Teledyne)

From: "C. Andrews" <chasds@mindspring.com>
To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
Subject: Re: [CR]Confente "Scam" ends
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 20:43:39 -0700


Brandon Ives wrote:
>Masi cost $10,000. I never want to see the name become more important than the item. Maybe it's the fact that I'm looking at another 50 years of collecting so my view is quite long. I'm scared for the future of "lightweight" collecting.<

The Confente auction got me thinking about this collecting bikes thing again. I have to wonder if our particular obsession with mostly 60s and 70s lightweights is simply a passing fad. Most of us (but not all, I know), are between 40 and 55 years old. When we fade out--so to speak--I suspect our passion for these bikes will fade too. Younger men and women will be looking for the bikes that THEY imprinted on when they were 14 years old...and it won't be a 1973 Masi GC.

Some of these bikes will always have some value. But not many. How many marques from the 1930s can anyone name, let alone say they own? Very few of us even care at all about these items (some of us do, I know...but very, very few of us, which is my point).

The great italian marques will probably always have some value--and a few selected others...but who knows? Hard to say. Right now, we're all having a bit of second-adolescence, with the money to indulge it (mostly)...when that dies down? Who can say.. In five years I bet all those early 80s lightweights that we tend to discount are gonna be pretty hot in some quarters...and the people who want them won't care much about a 1970 Pogliaghi I suspect.

Charles