Du Quoin Post Office to sell Hallmark cards

Next time you visit the post office for stamps, you might also be able to buy (and send) your brother his belated birthday card.

The U.S. Postal Service will start selling Hallmark greeting cards at the Du Quoin Post Office by the end of the week as part of the postal service's "get well" revenue generating program.

Du Quoin supervisor Melanie Segelhorst says the rolling card display will have about 60 offerings that will be freshened as new cards are released and the holidays change. It's a perfect fit for the post office. Pick out a card, buy a stamp and mail it. One stop shopping.

The cards will range from about $2.99 each to $3.99 each, cheaper than a lot of Hallmark stores.

About 1,500 postal branches started selling birthday and "get well soon" cards back in 2010 as an experiment.

Greeting cards remain a popular and profitable line of business, with 7 billion sold annually for more than $7.5 billion in sales, according to the Greeting Card Association. (Yes, there is one.) People receive more than 20 greeting cards each year, one-third of them for birthdays.

Of those 7 billion cards, roughly 4 billion are sent through the mail, accounting for about 2 percent of total mail volume.

Greeting cards are incredibly linked o the mail.

A Postal Service study confirmed that customers think selling greeting cards at post offices is appropriate and that they would buy them if offered. The goal is for the cards to help boost postal retail sales by 30 to 40 percent. A 2006 law allows the Postal Service to sell various mailing and packaging products and other mail-related items, including cards. Officials awarded the one-year deal to Hallmark's Sunrise Greeting card line, with the option to extend the deal for two more years.