Mercury is nothing to trifle with. I have read that a lot of the placer nuggets coming out of the river with Merc on it is from the old days when they used it to concentrate fines in their jigs and what not. You may read that you can just "hit" it with a torch and the merc will disappear, this is very bad. Hitting it with a torch evaporates the merc and puts it into atmosphere. If you handled the nuggets, I hope you were wearing gloves. It won't make you "mad as a hatter" with one contact but it won't do you any favors either.