Ux7d Post Card..date (Year) Upside Down..???

Was looking at this UX7d post card and noticed the year 1888 seemed to be upside down..Usually as I see it, the number eight normally has a smaller oval on top and a larger oval on the bottom...

Seem weird, or am I just over reacting...?
Robert

I agree the 88 is upside down. But the slugs were removable and it is pretty common that they did not get them right every day.
Don

Agree. Inverted Date slug. Year Slug. Nice find.

The YEAR slugs would not be replaced every day..They were separate slugs..sooo, they were probably upside down for a year..1888.

Robert

As seen in the image directly above, it would be easy to mistakenly invert a year slug when changing it every day with this one. There were many, many different types of these cancellers. Some are unique since postmasters even had them custom made for just their post office.
Don

Looks like a hand cancels so it's possible the slug fell out & replaced upside down by the clerk to continue with the process of cancelling the days mail & when cleaning the device noticed the upside down slug & reversed it back to the correct position.

The 2 posts show handstamps which are mechanically different.

The 1952 RPO device is much newer and has a handle which unscrews so that the date slugs are inserted from the back side into individual slots. The slugs have a lip to stop them from falling out the front when inserting them. The handle screws on and holds everything in place during use. The year date would almost certainly be inserted correctly at the beginning of the year and only removed periodically for cleaning.

The 3 devices Don shows use slugs inserted from the front (from the printing side) and held in place by the set screw. It is easy for all the slugs to frequently fall out when changing the AM/PM or day slug. Inverts would be fairly common - as would having the time, month, day, year slugs in different orders from day to day. They are also much older devices. I would expect the Toronto device to be of this general construction for holding the dating slugs.

As a tangent, occasionally the set screw stops just right to take ink and gets rocked a bit during canceling to imprint on the mail piece!