December 17, 2009, 20:51
Lindell V. RiddleThanks Tom,
That watch was sold by IHC185 Members Sham Agayev in October and by our member Jim Shutts just recently, I presume you are the new owner, if so I congratulate you on a fine acquisition.
First to the movement numbers, we must remember these were likely not assembled in chronological order, and sadly they had stopped keeping any production records. Hamilton was very disorganized in those later years in Lancaster, struggling to market whatever they could to whomever they could. To help illustrate, I have a 992B which is one of the post-production examples finished on pillar plate number S30125 (Dial BMN 379) and in Case 17 which is Solid Gold and numbered P164746 with Red Stamp "H8" and just two numbers away is S30123 which was confirmed as a 950B several years ago. See what I mean? Taking the numbers even higher, number S30219 has also been confirmed but even with that one we are still not done piling up the movement numbers.
And here is the highest we have recorded... 950B number S30242 in Case 17 numbered R904873
You see what I mean, the numbers dance around.
It is very confusing!Now about the stamped red case-back markings, that first red digit is a letter, in the instance of your case it is apparently an "M" and the second is a "7" but there have been differing opinions on the third digit, it will be a letter, not a number and at this point it appears to be an "R" to my eye, see the image below this posting. If correct that would make the marking "M-7-R" which would be in harmony with other recorded examples. As to what it actually means, it may be a date code or production code, perhaps a mixture of codes from the Star Watch Case Company but like so many things we obsess about, we really may never know for sure.
Anyhow, that's my view, always open to further interpretation.
Lindell
Here is your case-back, closer and sharper...