The conventional wisdom has been that it's best to wait until late in the holiday season to get the lowest prices. But that wasn't the case this year when it came to toys, according to analytics firm 360pi.

That firm has been closely tracking the online price changes on thousands of items throughout this holiday season at major retailers. Its most recent study focuses on a sample of over 270 toys, some of which were expected to be the hot sellers of the season and some of which were picked at random.

It found that that the prices on those toys at Target, Toys R Us, Amazon and Walmart were lower on Black Friday than they were on the so-called "Super Saturday," the last Saturday before Christmas, which was expected to be the busiest shopping day of the year. But, the firm added, it wasn't a huge difference.

"After Super Saturday, with before-Christmas shipping no longer avaialble, we can see retailers returning to their 'regular price,'" 360pi wrote in its report.

Another interesting nugget from the report was that Amazon, Target and Walmart raised prices on those toys on Friday, the day before Super Saturday, and then dropped them on Saturday. That way, one might surmise, the "sales" seemed even bigger on those items.

So when was the best time to buy those toys? Toys R Us, Walmart, and Target had their lowest average online prices at some point after Black Friday during "Cyber Week", the first week of December.

Interestingly enough, Amazon was the msot consistent with its pricing on toys throughout the period from Black Friday to Super Saturday. It was the traditional retailers who had more erratic pricing changes.