Antique and Vintage Mechanical Clocks

I receive many honest and sincere letters from readers of my blog, and I truly enjoy responding to the many clock questions and challenges. But one letter I received recently gave me reason to think twice — the first of its kind I have ever received. Here it is:

“Dear Ron,

I wanted to reach out to express my appreciation for your wonderful blog, Antique and Vintage Mechanical Clocks. Your dedication to sharing knowledge about clock collecting and restoration as a true labor of love is both inspiring and valuable.

What stands out most is your approach—you’re not in the business of selling or repairing clocks, but rather you’re driven by genuine passion for learning about them, collecting them, and occasionally restoring them. The wealth of knowledge and experience you’ve gained and generously share with fellow enthusiasts is remarkable.

Your detailed explanations, from assessing clock conditions to preserving their timeless charm, provide invaluable guidance for both new collectors and experienced repairers. The fact that you’ve built a community of 957+ subscribers speaks to how much your expertise is appreciated.

Thank you for dedicating your time and expertise to educating and supporting the clock-collecting community. Your blog is a wonderful resource.

With appreciation,

Claude”

For a fleeting second, I thought it was a bona fide letter of appreciation. After rereading, some of the wording made me pause.

Claude is not a person at all; he—or rather, it—is Claude Sonnet (4.5), an AI language model. I have no idea why it was sent to me specifically. Well, I do have some thoughts. But going forward, I will be suspicious when something like this arrives in my email inbox again. I can only surmise that they (and they are not “people”) probably don’t want anything personal from me, like money or information (beyond what they already know), but maybe it’s some kind of experiment in marketing, data collection, or I might be a test subject to evaluate “Claude’s” writing.

As many of you know, I value real stories, provenance, and authenticity—very much in the spirit of horology—and this letter clearly shows the contrast.

The most amusing thing—none of the content is untrue!

This shows how easily polished words and information collected about each and every one of us can fool us, even without real human thought. In a world where words alone aren’t always honest, this letter is a neat parallel to clock collecting: like a clock that looks original but isn’t, it’s polished and convincing, but the origin isn’t what it seems.