NO reason why this shouldn't have sniped, yet I lost the auction. Please explain.

Hello Ryan,
Thank you for your question about this item. We investigated to see what we encountered when we placed the snipe for you.
Unfortunately we cleared our logs, so we can't look up the exact reason, which is a part of the service we offer. It does not appear to be buyer strikes, but the seller has restrictions set. Please let me know the answers to these questions:
How many buyer strikes do you have on record right now?
How many items have you purchased from the same seller?
Have you completed the phone verification step in My eBay?
Does the seller ship to your country?
Please let me know and we can take the next step.

I've never had a buyer strike, never purchased from that seller, have the phone verification, and they do ship to my country (USA).

We did place the bids because the times were recorded. Blue means we don't have enough info to determine win/loss status; that is a lot harder to do than sniping because we have to traverse every possible scenario and don't have access to your account. You might do the phone verification again to be sure, as that is critical.
In any case, we have turned on very detailed logging for your account so that if this happens again we will know the exact reason.