Private Ebay auctions
 

I just happened to look at a sellers ME page on Ebay today and saw this in bold small print at the top of his page

"To protect bidder privacy, when the price or highest bid on an item reaches or exceeds a certain level, User IDs will be displayed as anonymous names. For auction items, a bold price means at least one bid has been received.

Note: Anonymous names may appear more than once and may represent different bidders."

- So I guess a seller can set a price level and then the auction becomes private ? this may also explain why some of the auctions I was biding on the other night sudenly became private