Question On Circle Cancel With 2 In Middle

Is this a postage due cancel? Been trying to find some information as to what is means, 2 in circle , but striking out. Must be using wrong terminology. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Couldn't seem to get any info from postmarks.org without joining and other searched turned up empty. Tks in avance.

See page 199 of the linked PDF. Appears to be Cole I-NC10, Louisville KY, 1882-1888, Commercial Cancel.

https://www.uspcs.org/wp-content/up...okmarked.pdf

Thanks. My googling & searching flails me again! Forgot to look in my own bookmarks too…. Have to figure out a better way to remember all this info!

So these were used by businesses?

PS - p. 189.

Cancel used a few different places. Similar cancels used by the Cincinnati and Philadelphia post offices at least.

Large post offices often had several cancelers differentiated by a number or letter in the killer portion of the device. (caveat: numbers and letters can also mean station numbers, so each city needs to be evaluated separately.)
They are not extensively listed in the various "fancy cancel" books because they are not particularly fancy. Considering there were 45,000 post offces at the end of 1881, any book must must be very limited and representative in its true coverage.
Cole's use of the word "commercial" means that they were manufactured and supplied by outside companies who made postal equipment, and the identical killer would exist for other cities as noted previously. As a tangential example, note that over 1000 cities used a cancel with a "Wheel of Fortune" killer, so that finding a W-O-F killer on a soaked stamp is impossible to connect to its origin city.
These were used to cancel the normal mails and have no connection to postage due or other types of mail incoming to a post office.

Interesting. So, out of curiosity, why a number in the middle at all?

Numbers and letters all have meaning - and different meanings at different times and places. The USPOD/USPS has been quite intense with tracking and record keeping. Employees were to do their jobs correctly and report irregular mail which came along to them (lack of cancel, improper handling, missents, etc) Trying to build logically on that, numbering the devices was an easy way to track property, track who was assigned to each device during each shift, where similar devices were deployed throughout a building, etc. I have no proof, but I can easily imagine an envelope being trackable to who cancelled it .... "Yeah #3 handstamp from Philly at 3am? That was Joe Smith's shift last Thursday. He is so lazy. Can't even cancel mail legibly."

By the late 1800s, as the era of machine cancels became common in the largest cities, a place like Chicago would have several dozen of the same make/model of machine all in a row. How better than a number in the dial or killer to tell them apart when one needed more ink or feeding adjustment? This is seen today with the 1L, 1T, 2L, 2T, 3L, 3T, etc., in modern spray cancels to identify which spray-head may need attention.

Oddly, cities with only one steel-duplex device used just the number "1", perhaps in expectation of eventually needing another?
Another oddity are the "Doane" cancels of the early 1900s issued to very small and new offices, containing a number in the killer related to their monetary volume. Go figure!

Switching gears a bit - Scott no. ?? I believe soft porous paper and perf 12. But so faded , color - pink? Cancel used 1882 -8 so maybe 1879 issue - Sc 186? Or 1882 issue, Sc 208?