Well, gang..here's a monkey wrench on the Confente saga. A very well respected framebuilder from Italy (O.K., you twisted my arm,: Dario Pegoretti) was once a wanna-be pro racer. Pegoretti had Confente build him a frame to race on, when Confente had his own shop outside of Verona. At this same time, he was contract building for Masi, but not working inside the Masi shop. Pegoretti, like most budding racers, crashed his frame, totalled it, and got rid of it. Pegoretti also said that Italian Confente frames, labelled as such, were not as uncommon as you'd think, and that he built more than a few for local racers. Apparently, Masi wasn't too happy about this, and it may be why Confente wasn't Masi's first choice to come to the U.S.
That much is written in stone, and right as rain. What does fall into the realm of rumor is that Confente was offered a job, and possibly an eventual partnership, with Colnago, just before he decided to go to California.
Could this frame be an Italian Confente?? Could it be a fake?? Who knows, but I'll buy anything once. I have a Piniarello that won the Tour of Flanders, with the astonishing fact that the bike was built a full ten years after that supposed race!! Talk about a miracle collector's item.
Anyway, the Pegoretti/Confente story is no April fool's, and is absolutely true.
Charlie Shafer
Madison, Connecticut