While in the nether my pickaxe broke, I used multi-home to get back to my house to craft a new one. When it loaded I had my pickaxe back. Not sure if this was just a lag issue or a true bug. o.0
did it have full strength or like 1 use left?] Edit: according to IxIHEADCASEIxI it had 1 use left meaning its a normal bug that I have experienced since 1.5 where the server and client are slightly out of sync resulting in the client seeing it break before it actually has broken. this happens on both vanilla and bukkit.
I only have my tools re-appear due to being "out of sync" when I've used my tool on things that reappear; this usually means I broke things in spawn or a protected town, lost durability, and regained that durability after switching worlds or relogging.