4-Bar Cancellation Questions

I am trying to understand what can account for the following:



The left top is what I believe to be a legitimate SEP 2, 1945 cancellation. I believe the left bottom to be a backdated "favor cancel." But how could the two be created with the same handstamp?

Here is pretty much everything I know about a 4-bar rubber canceller:



It looks like the date and time slugs should align up more or less in the middle of the cancel. But I know that cancels where the date and time are off-center are not unheard of:



What I don't understand is whether it is possible to account for the degree of variation seen in the top image from the use of the same canceller. The CDS and the "VICTORY ." and "VT." just inside the CDS look like the same device.

Can anyone shed any light on what is going on here?

Basil

A general philatelic guess.
How large would the PO at Victory be, in Vermont?
Could they have had 2 or more, similar cancellers in use.
Why assume it is the same canceller?

I'd guess that the PO at Victory, Vermont was pretty busy late summer 1945, and may have had more than one canceller. But it looks more like an angled or glancing strike to me.

rod222 and littleriverphil, thanks for the feedback.

Victory, VT, was a 4th class PO serving a hamlet of 100 people. From a news report the postmaster (postmistress, actually) reported cancelling 2500 covers on VE-Day, and had 500 on hand at that time for whenever victory over Japan occurred, so probably did another 2-3K for VJ-Day. Ordinary mail was probably 10-15 pieces a day, though Linto himself seemed to be doing 10-15 pieces with Victory, VT, covers once a week or more often in 1944 and 1945.

But regardless, I don't think this was more than one device. I've been studying Victory, VT, WWII patriotic covers intently for about 5 years and have viewed a few hundred of them. There is noticeable change in the CDS over time. The "R" became more pliable, picking up more ink over time. I've gotten to where I can identify the approximate year of a cover just by looking carefully at the lettering inside the CDS. The "R" shown in these two images is from roughly the same point in time, just differing in how much ink was picked up and deposited.

Ken Lawrence thinks that there were fake devices created through electrotyping being used to create fake cancels for Victory, VT, covers. A fake device created that way would copy what we see in the CDS and "VICTORY ." and "VT." but I am not sure how it would account for the time and date placement being so off unless the electrotyping just copied the CDS and lettering just inside, and the date and time were supplied by a separate device. The thing is, this is a pretty one-off example. It is one of a set of 12 covers created with Stahle cachets created for the overrun countries stamps. I've never seen anything else quite like this. But I'm open to the electrotyping hypothesis on this one.

The fact that there are 12 covers with identical displacement seems to rule out an angled or glancing strikes.

Basil

I think I solved the mystery. The difference in displacement appears to be because a SEP slug from a previous year, probably 1943, was used in place of the 1945 slug. here's an image that I think demonstrates that:


The center cancel is a genuine SEP 2, 1945 cancel. The one to the right is the one that had me baffled. Looking back through all the Victory, VT, covers I have I noticed that the 1943 cancels lined up to the right of where the genuine 1945 cancel lines up relative to the "T O" in "V I C T O R Y." In the bottom panel of the image, I highlighted the SEP and "T O" of a SEP 3, 1943 cancel in my collection, and copied it over the cancel on the right, lining up the "T O" of the two images. It shows almost exactly the same lateral or horizontal placement for the SEP.

My theory is that sometime after September 1945 the postmaster backdated some covers (I have five like this) with a SEP 2, 1943 with a slug from a previous years set (likely 1943) thus creating the different placement. Had the slug from the 1945 set for SEP been used, it would have been harder, or maybe impossible, to know that these are backdated covers.

Basil

Wow!
whether you solve it to your satisfaction, or not,
I take my hat off to your in depth study, Basil.

Marvellous approach, study, and hypothesis.
Well done you.
Philately at work.