“When I saw he was the one buying it, it made selling it feel a little better”: Country star surprises seller as he personally shows up to buy Facebook Marketplace find

Riley Green performs during the 2026 CMA Fest on June 06, 2026 in Nashville, Tennessee
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Facebook Marketplace has plenty of deals, but when one user listed his Gibson J-45 acoustic guitar for sale, he didn’t expect a country star to pick it up.

American singer-songwriter Riley Green has released four studio albums, with his latest, That’s Just Me, released in April of this year. Since his 2019 debut, he’s scooped up five Country Music Awards, making the Jacksonville native one of the genre’s biggest rising stars.

His success means he has money to play with. So, when a sunburst J-45 caught his eye on the social media marketplace, he snapped it up. Then, he collected it himself.

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“Didn’t really wanna sell this girl, but thought I would throw it on Marketplace,” the seller, Shane Allen of Front Beach Softwash in Panama City Beach, Fla shared on Facebook.

“When I got to the place that I agreed-upon meeting spot, it turned out to be Riley Green himself who was interested in buying it,” he added. “Let me tell ya, folks. This guy didn’t have to meet up with this regular Joe. Heck, he could have sent anybody to buy my guitar! Instead he invited me to meet him and look at [the] guitar.”

Green has just shy of 17 million monthly listeners on Spotify and 3.1 million Instagram followers. He’s a big deal, but opted not to send a lackey to pick up his new squeeze.

“When I [saw] that he was the one buying it,” Allen’s post wraps up, “well, it made selling it feel a little better.”

Posted by Frontbeachsoftwashllc on 

Green is set to feature as a coach on season 30 of The Voice next month, and is currently in the middle of his largest headline tour to date. Now he has a new guitar for his arsenal, and the world knows the humble means by which he got it.

Dream guitars have also been pried from Facebook Marketplace by the Travis Barker-backed artist KennyHoopla (that one under shady circumstances) and Gibson’s Certified Vintage manager.

One of John Lennon’s amps also popped up on the site, and the buyer had no idea.

A freelance writer with a penchant for music that gets weird, Phil is a regular contributor to Prog, Guitar World, and Total Guitar magazines and is especially keen on shining a light on unknown artists. Outside of the journalism realm, you can find him writing angular riffs in progressive metal band, Prognosis, in which he slings an 8-string Strandberg Boden Original, churning that low string through a variety of tunings. He's also a published author and is currently penning his debut novel which chucks fantasy, mythology and humanity into a great big melting pot.

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