Posted By:
Marc S.is sometimes done on really high dollar auctions to protect bidder's identities. Not saying I believe that that necessarily works - just that I think that's why that is often done.
Also - I don't believe anyone "should" do this - but I've often seen auctions like this play out with some idiot, new Ebay'er [read: experience collector] bid a ridiculous amount of money to discover what the reserve is, and then go back in and retract the bid with a note as to "entered wrong bid amount"
~ms