John Henriques and Frank (Francis) Ware were friends without jobs during the Great Depression. It didn't take long after starting their puzzle company for them to be recognized as the premier manufacturers of wooden jigsaw puzzles. Their partnership lasted from the early 1930s to the early 1970s, but the company is still in business today. For many collectors, Par puzzles are the ultimate find. If you would like more information, read Anne Williams' book (references) If you are a really serious collector of Par puzzles, join the AGPC where you can get access to Anne's research in the Game & Puzzle Collectors Quarterly. December 2002 Volume 3, Number 4 includes a 10 page article on the history of the Par Company.

  I don't have very many Par puzzles, but I can share the information that I can gather from my small collection. As far as I know, all Par puzzles came in a sturdy black cardboard box with a seahorse on the labels. I roughly date my puzzles by the box labels. My earliest has a pale green label on top and a light tan label on the end. The end label was probably the same color as the top and has faded. The label included a warning that the special figure pieces were not to be copied. These puzzles included the PAR logo above, as well as a seahorse figure. Later puzzles with the same color labels, excluded the warning.

 The end labels followed the same pattern with not much change to the first two and the change to the color and seahorse and the addition of an address on the third.