There is a good reason things have been quiet around here lately: I’ve spent the last two months building something very special for the watch community. Today, I am excited to finally be able to show you what I’ve been working on.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably spent a lot of time online looking for new pieces to add to your collection. The hunt is part of the fun, and getting a great deal on a hard-to-find piece can be really rewarding. There are a few ways to do that online now, but the experience leaves a lot to be desired.

Enter WatchPatrol: a new web and mobile application designed to make exploring the pre-owned watch world a little bit easier. Check out a couple of screenshots below.

Screenshot: Grid Style View

The Problem with Social Commerce

Pre-owned watches can be bought and sold many different places online. There are major channels like Ebay, Chrono24, and other private marketplaces. And then there are the watch communities, where tens of thousands of enthusiasts buy, trade, and sell watches through community forums. Forums are an excellent place to buy watches, this is where you find the best deals and the most passionate collectors.

The problem? Forums are designed for discussion, not commerce. Data is not structured in a way that allows filtering or searching. Browsing listings does not include imagery, forcing you to click through individual posts to view photos. On top of all that, the buying experience is fractured across dozens of difference domains.

This is where WatchPatrol comes in. WatchPatrol actively monitors all of the major forums for sales listings, scrapes important data (like price, contact info, etc.), and stores it locally so you can quickly discover great deals on your favorite models. On top of that, WatchPatrol allows you to save searches, alerting you as soon as a new listing matching your criteria comes online.

WatchPatrol Features

Search and Filter

Find the perfect pre-owned watch using price, source, brand, and much more.

Saved Searches

Save a search and get real-time updates when new listings appear.

Mobile Friendly

WatchPatrol adapts to your mobile phone, tablet, and web browser.

Quick Preview

Take a closer look at a listing without interrupting your existing search.

Pricing Engine

Prices are automatically compared to model averages, allowing you to find the best values.

Starred Searches

Keep a running list of the listings you’re most interested in revisiting.

Future Roadmap

This is the first release of WatchPatrol and it will be actively improved upon based on feedback from the community. Although it currently only draws from a handful of sources, new communities will be added shortly. In order to enjoy some of the advanced features of WatchPatrol, you need to create a free account.

Here are just a few of the ideas I will be bringing into WatchPatrol in upcoming releases:

• Map and location based searching
• User reputation tracking
• Email / SMS Alerts
• A Pricing API

Technologies

WatchPatrol is built with the following technologies:

• Python / Django
• Scrapy (a Python web scraping library)
• FuzzyWuzzy (a fuzzy string matching library open-source by StubHub)
• Implicit (a collaboritve filtering system for implicit data)
• Amazon Web Services (S3, Cloudfront, and Lambda)
• Heroku (a phlatform as a service)

If you have ideas for improving WatchPatrol, or run into any bugs or issues with the software, please don’t hesitate to post a comment here or email me directly using the contact form. I hope you enjoy the software as much as I did building it.

Happy hunting!

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About the Author

Mike Johnson

Mike Johnson is the managing editor and primary contributor to 60clicks.com. Born into a military family as the son of US Navy pilot, Mike spent many of his formative years studying Computer Science and User Experience Design. When not obsessing over watches, Mike spends time hiking, traveling, and spending time with his family in Phoenix, Arizona.