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Thomas comments on Magnetic rings (the most mediocre superpower) A review. - Less Wrong Discussion
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Interesting! It's not the same thing as what happens when a magnet is attracted to a ferrous metal, though. As they explain in the comments, the magnet falling through the pipe creates a current in the copper, making it an electromagnet. That should work with *any * metal, also gold; but it identifies a metal only as a metal, you wouldn't be able to tell which one (maybe if you made sufficiently precise measurements you could tell by the strength of the magnetic field, but we're talking about someone wearing a magnetic ring, not about lab setups). You couldn't use it to tell if some ore contained gold.
But now I'm wondering what would happen if you drop a piece of non-ferrous metal through a magnetic pipe... A ring is a very short pipe though; to see any effects you'd probably have to film it and play it in slow motion, so it wouldn't be very useful for prospecting either.
This is the basis for metal detectors, anyway. Golden pieces should have been detectable (and movable) by magnets, provided there is magnetic field, strong enough.
Some calculations just how strong and what the whole structure should have been - are necessary. But it should have been possible to make some magnetic gadget for gold "panning".
Provided that gold is the only metal in your ore. That is usually not the case.
You are wrong here. Wikipedia has this to say:
See.