Publisher · US
Parlin Color Co. (Parco)
Toms River, New Jersey · mid-20th century; span not documented
A regional New Jersey postcard publisher based in Toms River, which branded its cards “A Parco Card.”
Very little is documented about the company. No public master catalogue of its cards is known to survive, and we have found no reliable published account of its founding or closing dates.
What we can state comes from the cards themselves: the imprint PUBLISHED BY PARLIN COLOR CO., INC. · TOMS RIVER, N. J., the Parco banner, and serials such as PTP-2 and S-115 on Jersey Shore views.
Dating this publisher’s cards
US. With no company records to work from, date a Parlin card from what is printed on it. A five-digit ZIP in the imprint (ours reads 08753) means 1963 or later; a printed telephone number with a (201) area code fits this part of New Jersey before the 1991 area-code split. Some Parlin cards also carry a second, longer number belonging to the firm that physically printed them — that is a printer’s job number, and no published table reliably converts it to a year.
Sources: Primary evidence: imprints, brand banner and serials on Parlin Color Co. cards in the Postcard Origins collection; ZIP-code introduction (1963): USPS history. New Jersey (201) area-code split (1991): North American Numbering Plan history. See methodology.