Tool · Detroit Publishing Company, 1898–1932
The Detroit Publishing Company — also seen as Detroit Photographic Co. and Detroit Photochrom Co., often with a small painter’s palette mark — numbered its cards in series that map to first-printing years. Find the number on your card and type it exactly. One tip before you start: later Detroit cards often carry small Roman numerals by the dividing line on the back giving the actual print year (xvii = 1917) — if yours has them, you already have your answer.
Try one:
The earliest cards carry F (1898) and G (1899) prefixes; the main numeric series then runs from 1 up through the 82000s (circa 1931), with documented windows and genuine gaps — where the guide records nothing, this decoder says so rather than guessing. H numbers span 1907 to circa 1931 but often pair with a second number that dates better; C numbers are contract cards that also carry a regular number. The caveat that matters more here than anywhere: Detroit dates are first printings. Popular images were reprinted for years — some into the 1930s — on the same numbers, which is why every result on this page says “first printed” and why the Roman-numeral marks, when present, are the better evidence.
All ranges come from the Detroit Publishing Company dating guide published by the Newberry Library, itself derived from Nancy Stickels Stechschulte’s The Detroit Publishing Company Postcards (1994) and Lowe & Papell’s Detroit Publishing Company Collectors’ Guide (1975).