1909 GB Cover

Hi.

I am fairly new to the fascinating world of postal history, and have a couple of questions regarding the attached GB 1909 cover.

Is there any significance to the fact that the 1d stamp is upside down? I read somewhere that in the Victorian era the position or orientation of affixed stamps may have conveyed hidden meanings, but is that likely to be the case here perhaps?

Also, the Swiss cancel stamp on the reverse has '25.11.09.xi' - could anyone shed light on this please? The cover was sent on the 24th of February, so I find it unlikely to have taken until November to have arrived.

Finally, the Registered tab in the top left has the No. 1738 - am I right in assuming this is related to the post office number from where the cover was sent?

Apologies for the number of questions! Thanks for reading - any info would be greatly appreciated :)

Richard

Welcome! Nice cover.

The Swiss date is read as 25. II.09 XI. The II is in Roman numerals so it is February. The XI refers to time of cancellation or 11 am. The registered number 1738 isn't the post office number, but just the number assigned to this particular piece of mail from the post office of origin. Each item of registered mail would have a different number from that particular post office.

As for the upside down stamp, yes in some cases the position has a specfic romantic meaning, but in this case doubt it as it's commercial mail to a company. It was probably just the sender or postal clerk wasn't observant when placing the stamps. The romantic posisitions would probably be reserved for greeting cards and personal letters.

Hope that helps,
Will

Thanks Will for the info - and thanks also for the welcome :)

A beautiful cover.

The crossed lines are also indicative of it being a Registered cover, which helped workers track it.

Some old registered covers have the crossed lines in blue or shaded pencil, drawn in hand with a ruler.

yours is a pre-printed registered cover. I don't collect English stamps, but I would hypothesize that there is a catalog reference and probably a value associated just with the envelope itself

welcome