Pre-Cancelled Revenue On Certificate Of Deposit?

Here is a certificate of deposit I found interesting for a couple reasons. Anyone familiar with U.S. Treasurer Francis Spinner may also know that he spent some of his earlier years as cashier of the Mohawk Valley Bank, where he perfected his famous signature. You might look at this check and think "too bad that one doesn't have a Spinner signature." But it does! This was issued to and endorsed by the brother of Francis, Peter B. Spinner. Alas, his autograph is much less interesting.

But there's also an oddity I noticed. The CD is hand-dated Feb. 13, 1872 -- but the 2¢ revenue is date stamped Feb. 7. A look at the back shows the date stamp embossing, so this is not a case of a canceled stamp being affixed after the fact. What occurred here? I could see someone entering the wrong date on a check by a day or so, but six days is a stretch. This seems intentional, but why?

Other than precanceling, there's also the possibility that the clerk grabbed a canceler without checking to see that the date had been updated since last used.

Precanceled revenues happened all the time. After all, technically the tax was paid when the stamps were purchased, affixing them simply proved it was paid in the correct way (usually). And they represented real money to any company, who would purchase them in quantity. Individuals would purchase them from various locations depending on the size of the specific location where they were being used.

True, but you tend to see precancels far more frequently on proprietary items (match, medicine, CDVs, etc.) than bank or other financial transactions.

Since the stamp is obviously tied via circular cut cancel at the time of the transaction, it's unlikely that the stamp would also have been precanceled via a handstamp device, in my opinion.

I think that the date was part of the device that cut through the stamp and document at the time of affixing the stamp to the document. It is too well centered in the circular cuts to think they were separate devices. And, yes, the clerk simply did not check the date. February 7, 1872 was a Wednesday and thus February 13, 1872 was a Tuesday of the next week. No documents needed cancellations in the intervening days, so the clerk simply picked up the canceller and did his job.

To me it seems a stretch that no documents would need to have stamps cancelled for a whole week. The population at the time was about 1450 or thereabouts, so one would expect at least a few transactions a week.

You assume they only had one canceller. If they had more than one, it's easily possible that one didn't get used for a period of time.

Great insights, gentlemen! Thanks for your forensic discussion.