This year, both Black Friday and Cyber Monday set sales records… for online shoppers. Americans armed with mobile devices, tablets, and computers pulled out their credit cards and placed orders, turning yesterday into the biggest sales day in the history of online shopping. Apparently, Cyber Monday isn’t as pointless as we thought, and rampant discounting does draw shoppers.

Reuters reports that online sales during the non-holiday were up 12% from the Monday after Thanksgiving last year, leading to total online sales of $3.36 billion, the most money ever spent online in a single day.

That statistic comes from Adobe, which has access to sales data from the top 100 online retailers, capturing about 80% of all sales. Adobe can also tell us what people bought, noting that big-ticket items included new video game consoles from PlayStation, televisions from Samsung, new iPhones, and tablets from Amazon. LEGO blocks, Barbie dolls, and Nerf dart guns were hot sellers in toys yesterday.

Cyber Monday began in 2005 as in invention of the National Retail Federation, with online retailers creating exclusive sales to entice shoppers to go online at work. It’s clear that shoppers are not yet suffering from deal fatigue, and instead went on a shopping frenzy. Some of those items might even be gifts for other people.

Is it a sign of nationwide economic health, or of consumers who can’t resist great discounts? Perhaps the record shopping day is a little of both.

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