Illinois-shaped flake joins pantheon of cultural odds and ends

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 trivia site submitted a winning bid of $1,350 for the famous flake, found by two sisters and put up for auction. The owner collects Americana items to put in a planned traveling museum.

"That's the most perfectly Illinois-shaped corn flake I've ever seen," said Jon Wolf as he accepted the flake, swaddled in a cotton-lined jewelry box.

The curator of triviamania.com flew from Austin, Texas, to take possession Tuesday of the flake at the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum.

Wolf, who acknowledges eating many bowls of sugar-frosted flakes during his 42 years, 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 in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday. "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.

"I've got a guy who does museum-quality mounting," Wolf said of the flake's future home.

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.