By Chuck Martin
The Cincinnati Enquirer

This 10-year-old chick cupcake sold on eBay.com Friday.

It must be the highest-priced cupcake in Cincinnati history. And it's certainly the first time the bakery that made the cupcake has bought it back on eBay.

But this is no ordinary cupcake. In 1994, a friend gave Ken Lay of Westwood two Busken Bakery Easter chick cupcakes. He gobbled one, but couldn't eat its twin because it was "too cute."

So he returned the sweet bird to its original box and stuffed it in the freezer.

Now, 10 years later, Lay is about to marry Mary Bryan, who has three young daughters. To make room in his freezer the ancient cupcake has to go. Instead of tossing it, Lay's family put it up for auction last week on eBay. Just for fun.

Little did he know, Busken stopped making the chick cupcakes eight years ago. Maybe it really is a collector's item.

A colleague at Lay's graphic design firm bid $1 - not bad, considering the cupcake originally cost 69 cents. Then a reporter from an Erie, Pa., newspaper called about his unusual item. Next, someone from Busken Bakery phoned to say the company wanted to buy the chick cupcake.

"I told them that if they bid whatever it takes to win it and donate the equivalent in cookies or something to charity, they could have it," Lay says.

Busken's winning bid was $52.51. The company will donate pastries worth that amount to Cincinnati's Children's Hospital Medical Center.