Eliot is right.
The reason is, the Autoincrement is designed to return the NEXT AVAILABLE, which is 1 more than the largest record in the database. This is one reason why the field has to be indexed.
It used to be that if you had 99 records in your database, then deleted record 99, the next record inserted would be 99 (reusing the ID). Now, it will be 100. (I forget which version of MySQL that started with.) But the idea is to return a UNIQUE value.
If you "EMPTY" a database, the values start back over at 1.
PUGDOGŪ PUGDOGŪ Enterprises, Inc.
FAQ: http://postcards.com/FAQ