College student buys Yoshitomo Nara ashtray at thrift store for $10, flips it for $2,860 on eBay

College student buys Yoshitomo Nara ashtray at thrift store for $10, flips it for $2,860 on eBay
Bryan Ke
May 5, 2022
A TikTok user was left speechless after he bought a Yoshitomo Nara ashtray at a Goodwill store for $10 and received a 30,000 percent profit by selling it on eBay.
In a TikTok posted on April 17, Terrelle Brown, a 22-year-old student at Wheaton College in Illinois, shared that he received an eBay notification about the ashtray in the middle of his class. “Feel like I’ll regret this one in a few years,” he wrote in his post’s caption.
Speaking to Artnet News, the vintage buyer revealed that he came across the Nara ashtray while thrifting at Goodwill. 
I was shaking with excitement because I knew the potential of it,” Brown said. “I hopped in the car and started looking at eBay prices, and I was like, ‘This is unreal’.”
The art piece, which is a 2002 Nara original titled “Too Young To Die,” features a seemingly indignant girl puffing a cigarette in the middle of the ashtray.
Brown later checked to see if it was authentic by comparing the item and its packaging to others being sold online. He then listed the ashtray on eBay and managed to sell it for $2,860.
Brown is not the only one who has accidentally found a Nara original in an unassuming place. Thrifters in places such as Los Angeles and Phoenix, Arizona, have also found the same art piece, but instead of selling their ashtrays, they have reportedly chosen to keep them for now.

Nara is a contemporary Japanese artist who obtained his master’s degree from Aichi University of the Arts in 1987. His work often features children expressing complex emotions ranging from anger to serenity.
Born in the city of Hirosaki in Japan’s Aomori Prefecture, the artist sold his 2000 art piece “Knife Behind Back” for 196 million Hong Kong dollars (approximately $25 million) at Sotheby’s in 2019.
Feature Image via @tdotbdot
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