Black Friday proved once again to be a brisk of light in an economy largely characterized by dark, gloomy reports. Retail sales for the day after Thanksgiving were up 3 percent from the same day in 2007, with preliminary estimates putting total sales in the U.S. at $10.6 billion, according to Shoppertrak RCT. In addition, it seems that Nintendo's Wii had the right touch on Black Friday, as Web shopping saw an even larger percentage gain for the day, with traffic up 11 percent year over year. Both PriceGrabber and online commerce giant eBay confirmed that Nintendo Wii was the top product of the day, as consumers snatched up 3,171 Wiis over eBay, at an average selling price of $349, followed by Wii Fit, with 1,059 sold at an average selling price of $140.

This data confirms the fact the consumers are really responding to aggressive promotions and price drops on popular electronics. According to PriceGrabber, among the most popular products on Black Friday we can find Sony Blu-ray disc player, Samsung 52'' LCD TV, Nintendo Wii console, Nintendo Wii Fit, Panasonic 42'' plasma TV, Sennheiser headphones, Acer Aspire One notebook PC or Canon PowerShot A590 IS black digital camera.

An interesting fact shows that on eBay's Shopping.com, a GPS sold every 9 minutes, while an MP3 sold every 11 minutes. On eBay proper, the hottest products in those categories were the Garmin Nuvi GPS and the iPod Touch music player. Another company that boosted its sales thanks to the Black Friday was Apple, as 10 of the 25 bestselling electronics products sold by Amazon.com were Apple products. However, everyone is circumspect, even if there are really encouraging results. It remains to be seen if the economic cheer will continue throughout the holiday season.