Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, a great opportunity to spread some love…of economics…and study the greeting card industry. A search for greeting cards yields 90 results! One of the more interesting is shown in the graph. Unfortunately, we have only annual data; a higher frequency could have helped us see how much the industry depends specifically on Valentine’s Day. But we can see that the revenue of this industry appears to be trending down. So, is the reason for the decline the rise of the Internet and mobile apps? Maybe. FRED data can’t reveal all the mysteries of the universe, so we leave it to the reader to explore. Yours truly, FRED.

How this graph was created: As mentioned, a search for “greeting cards” yields quite a few results. Click on the series you want to graph.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.