…It says “If [star], ignore everything above. This just counts as something gold”.

A: The little star is a mark on the corner of Early American Chrononauts (EAC) cards, so that if you have both that and original Chrononauts (Chrono), and are combining them to play ÜberChrononauts, you can separate the decks when you’re done. Thus the star is meant to broadly indicate the EAC deck. (Rules for ÜberChrononauts are in the EAC rulesheet.)

What that star is indicating on the Throk-Trak Statuette, is that if you are playing with EAC instead of Chrono, you can ignore all of the wording about WW3, which applies only to Chrono, and the only thing you need to be concerned with about it is that it’s something Gold, which is useful in EAC because there is a Mission which requires gold items.