A few summers ago, a woman from metro Detroit walked into Nawbin Beads & Curiosities in Traverse City … and something in one of the cases quickly caught her eye. But not for the reason you might expect; instead, she thought a rock featured in some pendants and earrings for hundreds of dollars looked like something in the backyard of her dad’s house – which she was getting ready to put on the market.

“I told her it was fordite and if that’s what she had, it was likely worth some money,” says store manager Karl Bielman. “Cut and polished, fordite goes for as much as gold.”

Also known as Detroit agate, fordite is not actually a rock at all; it's chunks of old automobile paint created by overspray from the days when cars were painted by hand, including at Ford’s River Rogue Plant. Today, artists use it to create one-of-kind pieces of jewelry with its swirly, psychedelic designs.

A few email photo exchanges later and Bielman determined that the chunk in her father’s rock garden was indeed fordite – and it was the biggest piece he’d ever seen.

Bielman has been cutting fordite for jewelry for more than 10 years. He says a typical piece is 2 inches wide by 1.5 inches long and a half-inch thick. The usual colors are silver, black, red and gray. This piece, however, weighed about 15 pounds, was 8 by 18 inches and three inches thick. It also featured primary colors: green, red, blue and yellow – colors he traced back to the ’61 Ford Super Duty trucks.

“So I call it Super Duty fordite,” says Bielman.

Bielman worked out a deal with the woman and went to Detroit to pick it up, along with pieces of amethyst and other interesting finds in her father’s collection.

“It was probably in the garden since the 80s,” Bielman says of the chunk of fordite, which was worth approximately $5,000.

Dealers sell fordite today for between $1 and $5 a gram in its rough form, says Bielman. As a comparison, silver is selling for .50 cents a gram and gold $20/gram.

Bielman made pendants from the piece for the woman and her sisters and also traded or sold pieces to other jewelry makers and dealers, leaving him smaller pieces that he continues to work with.

In addition to Nawbin, pieces made with fordite can also be found at Gallery Fifty, On The Rocks and Korner Gem, all in Traverse City.