‘Alien Rock’ One of Duxbury Man’s Many Marketplace Musings

DUXBURY (WBSM) — You never know what you might find on Facebook Marketplace, but a Duxbury man wants to make sure that for every unique item he sells to you, you get an even better story to go along with it.

Ron Woolley recently listed a “Strange, alien hunk of something” for $10, one of his many weird items for sale with even weirder descriptions.

“What mysterious object has fallen from the sky and into my yard I cannot fully discern. It has an eerily radioactive lime green coloring, though my Geiger counter registers no dangerous emissions,” he wrote.

“Exactly what you need if you’re hoping to lure extraterrestrial treasure hunters to your home. Cash pickup in Duxbury,” Woolley wrote. “Follow me on Marketplace for more deals that are out of this world.”

The “follow me” signoff jokes are particularly creative on each of his Marketplace posts, ending the listing with one final punchline.

Woolley has a knack for making even the most mundane items seem like something worth shelling out a few bucks for, at the very least as a conversation piece at your next family get together.

For example, he recently listed a decorative plate as “Bavarian Lusterware is too risqué for my home.”

He described the $10 plate as having “an image of three young maidens, or nymphs, and an awkward shepherd having some sort of surprise woodland encounter.”

“I have enough trouble monitoring my household’s use of the internet, I don’t need to hang this lurid piece of transfer-ware in my home!” Woolley wrote. “Follow me on Marketplace for more items to resell on eBay.”

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If you’re a fan of the New Bedford “Seaflower” sculpture, you may want to have your own similar but smaller version at home; if so, Woolley’s got you covered.

“Driftwood Mystery brings Serenity and Prestige” was the title of the listing for this $20 item.

“Psychologists almost unanimously agree that nothing sets a more welcoming and serene tone than a giant driftwood tetsubishi artfully positioned at the entrance to one’s home,” he wrote. “Though seldom found in the wild any more, this fine example was painstakingly crafted in a factory on distant shores….Follow me on Marketplace, where ‘[N]o one seems to know how useful it is to be useless.’”

A listing of various Victorian-era lace items such as aprons and a shirt gave us a chuckle.

“I’m not an overly macho guy, but I’m never going to wear any of this women’s, or maybe girl’s, Victorian lace wear,” he wrote.

Woolley also addressed one of the most common questions people ask when purchasing clothing from Facebook Marketplace: did it come from a household where someone was a smoker?

“Sure it’s from a smoker’s home; everyone smoked in the 1890s. You’d be a smoker too, if your life expectancy were 40 and you didn’t have your iPhone,” he wrote. “Cash pickup in Duxbury. Follow me on Marketplace for more goods from the Gilded Age.”

Woolley got a little philosophical – which he thinks is much better than physical – with the listing of “Framed Bicycle Art, so much easier than actually biking.”

“You want to get back into bicycling, but this framed print is so much easier than fixing your old bike, getting back in shape, and actually biking. Plus you can enjoy this picture without ever having to wear spandex,” he wrote. “About 2 feet long, which takes up a lot less space than an actual bicycle. Cash pickup in Duxbury. Follow me on Marketplace because art is so much easier than life.”

Woolley took a couple of smaller Godzilla figures and paired them with a larger one and listed them as a “Godzilla Family” for $5.

“I’ve got to hand it to Godzilla; raising three offspring in a single parent household,” he wrote. “This family includes one adult Godzilla and three younger Godzilla offspring. Make them part of your family with a cash pickup in Duxbury. Follow me on Marketplace if you don’t know what to get your grandkids when they visit.”

We asked Woolley to give us a little insight into how he acquires the objects he sells on Marketplace, and how he comes up with his descriptions.

“That’s like asking the Wizard of Oz to look behind the curtain,” he said. “But since you asked, I ramble around, dumpster dive, salvage, etc.”

Woolley said he used to sell stuff to shops in Allston “before the web was much of a thing.”

He said he then moved on to eBay, but it’s been on Facebook Marketplace where his personality really got to shine through.

“I started with the oddball writing about a year or 18 months ago,” he said, noting he was “kind of surprised” at the reaction his descriptions have garnered.

“It’s essentially my autobiography through people’s discarded stuff,” he said.

Oh, and despite some of the guesses on the “alien rock” post ranging from frozen airline toilet discharge to some sort of radioactive residue, Woolley said it’s a little more mundane than that.

“It’s slag glass,” he said. “Airline waste would thaw and is usually blue. And I wouldn’t touch it.”

After all, he may be wacky, but he’s not crazy.