If your max absentee bid was taken during the live auction, that means that there was bidding activity that forced your highest bid to be used. An example of this would be when you bid $1000 but someone else placed a bid of $950 after you, with the hope that you might withdraw your bid and they could win the item.
When the live auction starts because the system will pull in the highest bid increment, it will go right to $1000 instead of having to move through all of the bid increments of the starting price to get to $1000 to save time.