Don't miss the next drop
Three small stars sit under the signature on this dial, above the lines that read 25 JEWELS and SELFWINDING. No Benrus document we can find explains what they stood for, which is why collectors simply call the watch a Benrus 3 Star. We are not going to invent an answer for it. The company that printed them is another matter.
Oscar, Benjamin and S. Ralph Lazrus opened a watch repair business in New York City in 1921. Oscar was the eldest, an attorney, and he handled the advertising and the finances. Benjamin had been to Columbia and served in the First World War, and he ran operations. Ralph, the youngest, was a salesman by temperament and took the sales side. The name over the door came from the middle brother with the middle of it removed: BENjamin lazRUS. All three ran the company as president at one point or another.
The repair bench became a manufacturer: movements bought in Switzerland, cases and final assembly done in America. By the beginning of the 1950s the brothers had passed Hamilton and were running the third largest watch company in the United States, behind Bulova and Elgin. They had done it from below. The findings of fact in a 1953 Hamilton lawsuit record Benrus watches starting at $24.75, with ninety-six percent of them selling at $71.50 or less.
This Benrus 3 Star reads as a 1950s watch on the dial terminology and the absence of a date, and we would rather leave the dating at the decade than pretend to a year. The rotor is engraved MODEL E6 195 SWISS, and the movement under it is Swiss-made, carrying a Benrus model code rather than the ebauche maker’s, which is exactly how the company operated. Which Swiss base sits underneath we could not verify, so we are not going to name one. The 7155 stamped on the caseback is the case series, not the caliber.
The case measures 33mm across and 41mm lug to lug on 18mm lugs, its bezel marked by the factory as 20 micron gold electroplate, its back stainless steel. That is plating rather than gold fill. The cream dial has speckled and drifted unevenly, applied gold Arabic numerals darkening in their recesses, the small hour plots gone dark with age. The dauphine hands have oxidized and lost finish, most of it gathered at the center, and the crystal carries fine surface scratching with haze toward its edge. Bezel and lug tips show the softened edges of a watch that was worn. Time only, no date.
Serviced in-house at OTTUHR and backed by our 2-year mechanical warranty, on a taupe Saffiano leather strap with an OTTUHR buckle. The Lazrus brothers turned a New York repair bench into the third largest watch company in America. The stars on the dial are the one detail the record does not settle.
