THERE'S ALWAYS A BUYER.

Have you ever heard of Golden Palace.com? If you haven’t you’re probably richer for it. It’s an Internet Casino – you know, one of those web-sites that allows wannabe Amarillo Slims or Beaumont-Overweight-Shirleys to play games of chance with no chance of winning. Golden Palace is just one of many gambling Internet sites. They’re all doing well, thank you, because there are hundreds of thousands of suckers eager to lose their hard earned cash.

But, Golden Palace is also the most unique gambling web-site around. It doesn’t offer famous entertainers performing in its lounge: The Rat Pack, Rip Taylor or Connie Francis having a nervous breakdown. It doesn’t offer free all-you-can-eat buffets for ‘players.’ It doesn’t boast of a world class art collection – although it does have 3 clowns painted by Red Skelton. What it does have is a pretzel shaped like the Virgin Mary.

Golden Palace is known for its collection of oddities – odd items. All these crazy, useless items will one day be housed in a traveling museum that the online casino is creating for its collection. Obviously the owners of Golden Palace are our kind of people and deserve your business.

This week they paid $1,775 on eBay for are you…ready?...a pierogi that looks like an image of Jesus. Golden Palace considers their buy as one-of-a-kind find. Even if you’re not a gourmet cook you should know that an image of Jesus on a pierogi is unusual. Many people have tried to pawn off pierogis before with the likeness of Jane Powell, Gil Hodges and Alexander Butterfield…but Jesus? Jesus.

The seller, Donna Lee, said the Jesus face appeared when she was cooking Polish Dumplings for Easter dinner at her home in Point Place, a Toledo suburb on Lake Erie. She’s kept it in her freezer ever since but did take the precaution of wrapping the Jesus pierogi in a warm outer jacket and earmuffs.

I think Donna Lee deserves some applause because she didn’t immediately call the media to her home and make a big deal out of her special pierogi. You read all the time of some nutso who turns their home into a religious shrine hoping to make a buck on an iced-over window that supposedly depicts Judas asking for separate checks at The Last Supper. Those religious con men and women should be ashamed and be cast into Hell with most politicians and theatrical agents.

Donna Lee waited years before she offered her rare potato dumpling on eBay. If she had made a big deal out of it when her Jesus first appeared in her frying pan she was afraid they’d commit her to the Toledo Home-for-the-Silly. Remember, the words of Heidi Fleiss…”for every item there’s a buyer.” Well, Golden Palace is thrilled with their buy. “We seem to have an interest in all of these religious items,” said Drew Black, a marketing spokesperson for GoldenPalace.com.

Among the other oddities that the pierogi will join is, a 10-year-old, partially eaten cheese sandwich though to contain the image of the Virgin Mary; the pretzel shaped like the Virgin Mary holding a baby Jesus – notice how many of these ‘religious’ items are of the Virgin Mary? That’s probably because a virgin is such a rare commodity these days; a tomato in the likeness of Noah wearing Speedos; and a pregnancy test that allegedly belonged to Britney Spears.

I salute these entrepreneurs and wish them well along with their collection of keepsakes. If you have a few extra shillings rattling around in your cummerbund dial up GoldenPalace.com on your computer and get rid of it.