Ive noticed this a lot too and I think most of the people that I have seen doing this are nits and are probably doing it with really big hands.  If I have a hand that plays well after the flop I like to do what you do see the flop try to stack or fold if I miss.

 

Interested to hear what others have to say on this topic.

I think that most likely is a donkey with a big pair wanting action. Having said that I've seen the occasional player doing this as a bluff/semi-bluff and I've seen it from some donkeys who treat their medium-strength hands as the unbeatable nuts and do this. Unless you've seen evidence of something else it's best to weight your range assumptions towards big hands in my opinion - it's true more often than not. If stacks allow for it, you can try to take the flop and continue if you hit 2 pair+ strength (or huge combo draw). In your example your play was probably fine.

Thanks for the responses.  That's what I treated them as, big pairs afraid to scare away opponents.  Just seem to have seen a bunch of these recently and kind of bugging me.

Ha, just saw a min-3 bet preflop in the $2k guaranteed tourny.  The 3-bet guy had AA, and he went for a CR on the flop of Q10x, of course the other guy had a set of 10s.  Beauty!