A must have app for estate sales and trifting
AI Watch Finder, app for your phone
At Maecenium, we see watches as beautiful synergy of math, tech and art, thus it’s not surprising that recently developed AI App for watch identification captured our attention.
Watch.ID, available for both Androids and Fruits, is directly related to Horoview, the largest watch database and a very practical website which allows users to create watch list of their favorite models and effortlessly check the market, so they can get the best deals.
Back to the app: upon installation, you will get the simplest app you could imagine with almost no options.
All that you can do is to take a photo of the watch you want to identify, and the algorithms will do the rest. It is that simple.
Testing Watch.ID
My testing procedure consisted of 4 classes of tasks:
- Identification of distinguishable, unique and iconic vintage watches
- Identification of very generic vintage watches
- Identification of very generic modern watches
- Identification of very unique new watches
I made the tests with the watches I have at my home, and now I will repeat the test with eBay images.
In order to make it more difficult for the app, I’ll be taking slightly different angles and crops.
Each class will be represented by 5 watches, and the images I used will be available to you for independent testing.
All the links will take you to eBay, and if you follow them and decide to buy something (anything) you will also make a seamless donation for our nonprofit organization.
- Elgin Golf Ball Jump Hour (I love how it projects the “sparks”)
- Borel Kaleidoscope (brilliant watch for <100 USD)
- Raketa Kopernik (from USSR, and no it’s not “Paketa”, P in Russian = R in English)
- Tag Heuer Monaco (the ugliest watch if you are into circles)
- Bulova Acutron (produced in 2050)
5 out of 5 – very impressive!
The Second group consists of the following models:
- Certina Dress watch that can be anything
- Waltham tank watch (there are dozens of similar designs)
- Random Casio Edifice
- Random Casio, the most random imaginable
- Very generic vintage lady Bulova
Certina, it got it right!
Waltham, it recognized it as some pre-WWII Waltham art deco – I will count it as “passed”
Edifice Chronograph, it got it 100% correct.
The most generic Generic Casio – it is W59, I’ll count this as pass
Finally, the most generic Bulova – It recognized it as 10k gold Bulova, which is good enough
I would say that this was also 5 of 5.
Getting the exact model for Waltham and Bulova watches is extremely difficult unless you are very specialized collector.
After achieving 10 of 10, I decided to push the app beyond reasonable by asking it about:
- Minimalistic Fossil
- Fake Rolex, very, very fake
- Minimalist Swatch, that looks like an icon
- God Knows What, from Ali Express
- Generic Seiko
FS5304?! Minimalistic Fossil is identified
Incredibly fake Rolex passed as Daytona. I’ll count it as correct. The app has some power of abstraction :)
Swatch GW151, come on! Come on, make a mistake!
“God Knows What From AliExpress” = Olevs 6667, whatever that thing is
The most generic golden Seiko is Seiko SGF526
Before tossing the towel and admitting the defeat, there is one more group
- Odd Xeric
- Projets Watch
- Mr. Jones
- Wooden Holzkern
- Klokers
Oh my God, it finally made a mistake, and misrecognized Xeric for some Blue Moser & Cie… I cropped it too much, it knows it’s Xeric Triptych L
Projects Watch and Mr. Jones, it recognized the brand
Holzkern Mountainlake…
Klokers klok-01-d2
To summarize…
The app was able to identify all 20 watches?! and it only struggled with the most generic models that nobody can identify anyways.
It worked well with my watches as well, failing only to identify very generic Edifice Chronograph produced some 15 years ago.
I don’t know what are you waiting for: just install it
