First Allocation 38 - Numeral and Ms on a pair

[admin]

Going through my Tasmanian stamps I found this pair of Star watermark 4d Chalons. I came by these years ago before I knew very much about numerals.
The interesting thing is that on the left we have Numersal 38 of Jerusalem but the "8' has hardly registered. On the right is the manuscript "38".
Does this tell us that this canceller was worn or defective so that the postmaster had to endorse the "38" by hand on the right stamp after the faulty "8" did not show on the left?
There seems to have been an attempt to cancel the right stamp but only some of the bars on the canceller have shown. There is also a large manuscript cross through the middle of the pair.
Has anyone seen anything similar or have any suggestions about this ?

4d-Chalons-pair-lined--numeral-12(Numeral-38).jpg (492.61 KiB) Viewed 7086 times

[John Hardinge]

The First allocation numerals were made from very poorly face hardened steel and hence many of them impressed very poorly indeed. Whilst I have not seen any exactly like this I have seen poor strikes manuscripted over with the number before. It's another reason why so many first allocation manuscript numerals are known along with the fact that a number of country office ran out of ink. In the 1850's inking balls were still used and ink ran out easily. It was not until the late 1850's that "modern" oil based ink that dried quickly through the addition of petroleum distillate and made inking balls redundant was available. Prior to that time ink was also poor quality ad the means to apply it was also haphazard.