Apple's tiny, pencil-thin iPod nano music player is among the best-selling items early in the holiday shopping season, according to several online retailers.

For the week that ended on Black Friday, traditionally the biggest shopping day of the holiday season, online marketplace eBay said today that it saw a 161 percent week-over-increase in sales of the 2GB black nano and a 95 percent increase in sales of the 4GB black nano.

The 4GB white nano saw an 88 percent week-over-week increase in sales on eBay, while the new 20GB iPod with video saw a 45 percent increase in sales, according to the auction site. The 4GB and 2GB players were commanding an average sale price of about $242 and $201, respectively.

Amazon.com included the white nano on its regularly updated list of top-selling items on its site today as well as on Black Friday. BestBuy.com also reportedly sold out of the nano players at the end of the week.

Apple has sold nearly 30 million iPods since they were introduced in 2001, giving Apple a commanding 75 percent of the worldwide market for digital music players, according to market research firm NPD Group.

When Apple reported its quarterly earnings in October, chief operating officer Tim Cook called the demand for the nano "staggering."

Earlier this month, Apple quietly started shipping protective sleeves with the nano. The move was likely a response to a flood of complaints about the nano having a scratch-prone display screen.

A California class-action lawsuit over that issue expanded two weeks ago to include the UK and Mexico. The suit claimed the Nano screens were defectively designed, allowing the screen to quickly become scratched with normal use.