HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — Looks like Diana Duyser's going to get some really nice bread for her EBay item — $28,000 for a 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich that she believes bears the image of the Virgin Mary.
Bidding on the Internet auction house closed Monday night. The winning bidder wasn't disclosed on the website, but was identified by the Miami Herald as GoldenPalace.com, an online casino.
Photos posted on the site show what can be viewed as a woman's face emblazoned on the triangular half-sandwich, a bite taken out of one end.
GoldenPalace.com executives said they were willing to spend "as much as it took."
"It's a part of pop culture that's immediately and widely recognizable," spokesman Monty Kerr told the newspaper in a story on the Herald's website. "We knew right away we wanted to have it."
The new owners of the sandwich didn't want to risk it getting lost in the mail, so Kerr and Steve Baker, chief executive of GoldenPalace's management company, Cyberworld Group, flew to South Florida on Monday to meet Duyser and make arrangements for a sandwich handover.
Duyser, 52, said she had kept her sandwich in a clear plastic box on her nightstand for 10 years.
She said the sandwich had never sprouted a spore of mold.
A St. Petersburg woman finds what she considers a holy image. Will she keep the chip or sell it? She's not sure yet.
This small Lay's potato chip bears the image of Jesus, according to 55-year-old Rosalie Lawson. She and her husband don't know what they'll do with it. "I don't know if we're going to try and sell it or what yet." [Times photo: Willie J. Allen Jr.]
By MARY JANE PARK, Times Staff Writer Published June 8, 2005 [Last modified June 8, 2005, 06:40:24]
ST. PETERSBURG - Rosalie and Jerry Lawson have an eye for collectibles. Their home in Shore Acres is filled with family heirlooms, holiday displays, Gone with the Wind memorabilia, reproductions of Chrysler's PT Cruiser.
They're no strangers to religious iconography. The couple are active Episcopalians - Jerry Lawson's father, the Very Rev. LeRoy Lawson, was the first dean of St. Peter's Cathedral.
One Valentine's Day, her brother found a heart-shaped potato chip, but no one in the family had ever seen what emerged from a bag of Lay's sour cream and onion potato chips a couple of weeks ago: an oval measuring roughly 1-1/2 inches in diameter, in which Rosalie Lawson saw the image of Jesus Christ.
"I shop at Publix at Northeast Shopping Center," she said. The store recently had a buy-one, get-one-free deal on the chips, and she bought a couple of packages for the Memorial Day weekend.
One night, while watching television, she said, she was munching away and pulled a chip from an 11-ounce bag.
"With things in food these days," she said, she's careful to look at most comestibles.
"I was down there by myself" in the TV room, she said. "I said, "Jerry, you've got to see this potato chip.'
"He said, "Yeah.' You know how guys are," she said.
Then, Rosalie Lawson said, her husband suggested, "Well, we can't eat that."
She has shown photos of the chip to fellow churchgoers and to family members, all of whom have been amazed at the resemblance.
Of course, who knows what Jesus looks like?
"You only know what you think he looks like from pictures," said Rosalie Lawson, 55.
She knows about the GoldenPalace online casino, which spent $28,000 for a 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich that reportedly bears the image of the Virgin Mary; $10,600 for the pretzel that looks like the Virgin Mary cradling the infant Jesus; and $232.50 for the chicken breast that resembles the visage of the late Pope John Paul II.
She sent e-mails to CNN, to WFLA and to the St. Petersburg Times.
"Well, I'll tell you what," she said Tuesday afternoon to a reporter and a photographer from the Times. "You're the first people to call me.
"How do you even say, "Guess what? I have a potato chip that looks like Jesus. Do you want to buy it?' I don't know if we're going to try and sell it or what yet."
The Lawsons' chip is "just in a jar on the buffet in my kitchen," said Rosalie Lawson. "We're just going to keep it for now."
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Holy Potato Chip! Whose image do you see on this potato chip?
The late Jerry Garcia: 466 votes - 49%
Red Sox centerfielder Johnny Damon: 354 votes - 37%
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