Practically everyone who’s gone shopping at a secondhand store has hoped to stumble across something they can sell for big bucks. While some people hope to find ultra-rare vinyl records or paintings, one college student struck gold with an ashtray.
Artnet reports that Terrelle Brown, a 22-year-old Wheaton College senior, was shopping at his local Goodwill when he spotted a peculiar-looking ashtray. The item, which was still in its box, was priced at $10 and featured a depiction of an angry-looking girl with a bowl-cut hairstyle smoking a cigarette.
Brown recognized the style and believed that it belonged to artist Yoshitomo Nara, whose art is being resold for super hot prices. So, he coughed up the 10 bucks and took the ashtray home to see if he could make a quick buck.
“I was shaking with excitement because I knew the potential of it. I hopped in the car and started looking at eBay prices, and I was like, ‘This is unreal,'” he told the outlet. He authenticated the piece and put it up on eBay, where it sold for $2,860 — a 30,000-percent profit. Brown also shared a video of his lucky find on TikTok.
Other lucky thrifters have had similar success stories, where they found Nara’s ashtrays at their local second hand store. “It’s like it’s an industry plant,” Brown shrugged, theorizing that the artist’s studio gave the shops the artwork to deliberately drive up their market value.
Whether or not that’s true has yet to be seen.