This is just an ethical question about something 
I saw on Yahoo Japan recently and I wanted to see 
if this sort of thing happens often. 

Not too long ago a set of four cels was up for 
auction. I had a bid on them. I got outbid, thats 
cool - I was willing to go higher. The point is - 
it was an auction very much in progress. And then 
before I knew it, the auction had disappeared 
completely. There wasn't a buy out price or 
anything. And then today I go looking at cels 
again and I see the SAME set of four cels with an 
opening bid that is significantly higher then it 
would have ever gotten from the other auction. To 
put things in perspective: The last I saw the set 
before it disappeared it had gotten up to 1600 
yen. Today, the same set has an opening price of 
30,000 yen. No bids as of me writing this message.

Can anyone explain to me what happened here? Does 
this happen often? Is it even allowed? Its one 
thing if the auction was retracted before any 
bids had been placed. But there had already been 
a few. 

I didn't have my heart set on those cels or 
anything, so I guess it doesn't really matter, 
but the whole thing just made me feel kind of 
ill.