Hamilton star designation

[Melus28]

I have seen in several places people referring to a Hamilton 1 star or 3 star.

What does the star designation mean?

[Don Dahlberg]

The book "Complete Price Guide to Watches" by Shugart, Engle and Gilbert attempts to rate the rarity of a watch by a star method. One star is "uncommon", two "sparce", three "very few" and so on to five "rare". I am not sure in numbers what this means.

There are two problems with this. We do not have production numbers for many of these watches, although we know more about Hamiltons than any other maker. We also do not know how many of a particular grade have survived. Finally there is the question as to if anyone cares that a particular grade is "rare" if it is not special in some other way.

Besides the legal restriction, it one of the reasons we do not discuss value of a particular watch on this board. Value is in the eye of the collector and we have many different eyes and see the world in strange ways.

Don