WILLIAMSBURG, Va (AP) -- A breakfast cereal flake shaped like the state of Illinois will join Jack Ruby's hat and Marilyn Monroe's datebook in a traveling exhibit.
An Internet site that celebrates Americana submitted a winning bid of $1,350 for the famous flake, found by two sisters and put up for auction.
``That's the most perfectly Illinois-shaped corn flake I've ever seen,'' said John Wolf as he accepted the flake Tuesday. It was swaddled in a cotton-lined jewelry box.
The curator of triviamania.com flew from Austin, Texas, to take the flake to the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum.
Wolf likened his interest in the food to the nation's celebration of the ordinary in shows like American Idol.
``I think it's taking something absolutely ordinary and making something extraordinary,'' Wolf said Wednesday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. ``I just think that it is part of the culture.''
He also was charmed by the enthusiasm of the sisters who put the state-like flake on eBay.
Emily McIntire, 15, found the 2-by-1 3/8-inch flake in a box of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes on her way to school. Inspired, she and her sister, Melissa McIntire, 23, offered it for sale under the listing ``The Great Illinois Corn Flake.''
The flake will join a collection that includes Ruby's hat, worn the day he shot Lee Harvey Oswald; Ron Howard's letter jacket from ``Happy Days''; and Monroe's datebook from the year she died.
As for the McIntire sisters, they had hoped to make enough for a trip to Disney World in Orlando, Fla., but may head to Hershey Park instead.
Wolf, meantime, is corresponding with a man who claims to possess a cheese-flavored snack in the likeness of Jesus.
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