Terribly unusual to find gold on mica?

[BentFunky]

Not really hard rock mining, but main question is rock oriented. Hope it?s ok.

I?m finding calcite with bands of mica running through it. Odd thing is that the rocks set off my Falcon MD20 when I move it?s probe toward the bands of mica. Crushing and panning a sample indicates gold color mica is the mineral triggering my detector. This gold colored mica is last material in pan after everything else washes out, so it?s heavier than I?d expect. It?s also more malleable. Although, it?s clearly mica and not pure gold.

Question: what would be a good way to rule out/in gold. I?m thinking that aqua regia should dissolve out any gold if it?s present allowing me to do a stannous chloride test. Does this sound reasonable?

Pic attached below.

 

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[BentFunky]

Follow up: answer is that aqua regia can be used to test for gold on mica. However, I think that it’s far from ideal. Normally mica is quite brittle and it should be easy to grind into a powder. Apparently, mineralized mica (probably not correct phrase) is a pain.

I was able to grind the material adequately enough to leach out some of what appears to be gold. Ended up with a positive stannous chloride test. Unfortunately, probably not worth the effort to extract such gold unless you have a huge amount of source material and some cost efficient way of dissolving the silica.

A bit of a let down but still an interesting experiment.