Numbers on Moore & Co printed marks

Some time ago I wrote about numbers on Moore & Co printed marks. Number 48 appears on plaques marked 'California' (see below). The California gold rush was in 1848.  So could the number indicate the year the plaque was produced?  

The other Moore plaques with numbers are as follows.  N.B. both the Waverley and Sporting printed marks appear on earlier items without the number.  See the landscapes page.

For a while I've thought that the Chantry transfer below should have a number too. This week I found it -- 52 -- on a wash jug and bowl on eBay.

And thanks to Norman Lowe for the photos below of a Moore & Co saucer with another numbered mark.

Having found these two new items with printed numbers, it now seems much less likely that they relate to years. So the correspondence of the sequence of numbering, with the years around which we'd expect the plaques to have been made, appears to be purely coincidental.

What would settle the matter once and for all would be to find an item with a number earlier in the sequence.  Please get in touch if you have a Moore & Co item with a numbered printed mark.