Question for the list:
I'm not blessed enough to have known Mario, ride any of his frames, see an actual Confente at my local Bike shop. The closest I've ever come was reading Mike Kones write up in his wild guesses about bike prices piece, and reading posts here. My question is this: what makes the bike so special? Brian, is it the lugwork and construction? Chuck is it the geometry and ride? Now for the blasphemy. Given the geometry is known, the lugwork could be duplicated quite easily by Brian, could a framebuilder recapture the mojo of a confente in a new frame? Sure the cache of having one of only a few hundred bikes ever made by a given framebuilder isn't there, but I get the idea that isn't what we are talking about when we wax lyrically about Confente bikes. The closest thing to this concept that I can conceive would be e-richie's bikes.
Marty "I've got nomex..." Eison Dallas, Texas