I've done a lot of gold dredging in northern cal. No, gold is not magnetic. The only thing gold is attracted to is mercury. So I guess mercury could be called a gold magnet. Don't get caught using mercury in the streams as it is illegal. Sounds like what you have is mica. Gold is very heavy and believe me, when you find gold you will know it's gold. If you want to test your finds to see if they are gold, buy a small bottle of nitric acid. Pour a small amount of nitric acid on the item you want to test. If it starts smoking and dissappears it is not real gold. Nitric acid will not affect gold. We used to pan down our dredge concentrates and when we got to the fine stuff that was too hard to separate out we would put the fine cocentrates in a plastic gold pan and pour nitric on it to clean it up. Then we would flush the nitric out, put a little water in the pan, enough to cover the concentrates in good shape and then pour in a glob of mercury and roll it around in the pan and it would pick up all the fine gold and leave the black sand. We would then place the mercury button in a cheese cloth and squeaze off the excess mercury back into the merc container. Then we would take the gold saturated merc and put it in a metal gold pan. Set the pan on a gas camping stove which is outside in a well ventelated area and cook off the merc. Make sure you leave the area and don't breath the fumes. When the merc is cooked off you have your gold lef in the pan. The gold will be a little discolored from the heating action and the nitric acid so put it in a small bottle with some strong vinegar and shake it for a while and it will get it's pretty golden color back. hope this helps you out. thanks Earl ps don't touch the merc with your bare skin as it it might penetrate your skin and get in your blood stream and lodge in your heart.
