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Mystery surrounds the withdrawal from sale on eBay of an iPhone complete with the Flappy Bird app - which was fetching a staggering $94,000.

The 16GB iPhone5 was put on sale until 1am today, although having attracted 69 bids and a sale price of $94,100 the device suddenly disappeared from the online auction site.

It is not known if the ad was removed by the seller or by eBay.

Bidding had started at $750 but was up to $7,000 in little more than an hour.

Other phones with the app are also being offered on eBay - currently at slightly more normal prices, and not necessarily with any takers.

Flappy Bird, which has topped the Apple iTunes and Google Play stores in recent weeks, gets players to navigate a bird through a landscape of pipes.

The game has been downloaded more than 50million times, but its Vietnamese creator Dong Nguyen announced on Saturday he would be withdrawing it from the app stores.

He tweeted: "I am sorry ‘Flappy Bird’ users, 22 hours from now, I will take ‘Flappy Bird’ down.

"I cannot take this anymore."

He had earlier commented: "I can call ‘Flappy Bird’ a success of mine.

"But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it."

A spokesman for eBay said: "We are seeing listings for around £200 - £400 which are attracting bids and sales for these prices are expected to complete.

"Some of the other listings for much higher prices are not genuine, or there can be problems with the listing, and we remove or manage these listings to ensure eBay remains a safe place to shop."