The Velvet Underground might have just called it "sweet nuthin.' "

The winning eBay bid of $155,401 for an ultra-rare Velvet Underground acetate has been retracted. Instead, the record will continue on sale, said Erica Johnson, of the California store Saturn Records, which is handling the auction.

"There was a lot of joke bidding going on. That's what happens with an auction like that," she noted, adding that the retraction was not a surprise. "We're in the process of sorting through the remaining bids. We're basically just waiting to see who's actually interested."

In 2002, Montreal resident Warren Hill bought the record at a New York garage sale for 75 cents. The record, with a cryptic hand-written label, wasn't easily identifiable, and Hill recruited his friend Eric Isaacson, owner of Portland's Mississippi Records, to help research it. Eventually they discovered the record was an early version of the Velvet Underground's debut album, "The Velvet Underground & Nico."

When the eBay auction ended about 8:30 p.m. Friday, an eBayer using the name "mechadaddy" topped the 253 bids with a price of $155,401. But that purchaser later sent an e-mail to Saturn Records, which handles a number of such consignment auctions for eBay, saying that a friend had used his computer to enter the bid, a reason also given by users who had retracted previous bids, Johnson noted. "A lot of people were doing it just because I think they wanted to be involved in some way."

Now the search for a legitimate buyer continues, Johnson said. "There's definitely interested buyers out there."