I have not been timing myself but it sure seems like a marathon.... 3 tubes away from the halfway point at the moment.
If you buy a monster box from a reputable dealer, would you still go thru the hassle of opening each and everyone to test?
Yes, that's what I'm doing. My thought is that how can I be truly certain if I do not? What if i sell one of the ASE's and the buyer shows that it failed the magnet test? Had I not performed the test myself I would have to take his word for it, but having performed the test myself I know without any doubt that he's trying to scam me and return a fake swapped for the authentic one I sent him.
I'm also taking this opportunity to check the date on each one and make sure they are all ordered "face up" in the tube.... call me ocd
Unfortunately Niveka, I have never(or likely ever will) had the pleasure of a monster box of anything.
You tell us, I think your the only one doing it :lol: Have you ever come across any fakes or strange things while doing this?
Never done this before but as far as this effort goes, I am now halfway through and nothing unusual so far. Being new to this I was a bit concerned that they are weighing in at 31.3 instead of 31.1 but after a little reading I gather that this is nothing to be concerned about. The only other unusual thing I have noticed is that my magnet is so powerful that it sticks to my granite counter top, must be a little iron in the slab
Yeah, better a little more than a little less and could be the scale. On the bright side you get an extra ounce of silver every 155 ounces haha.
Ok, done, here are a few things I learned along the way: 1) It takes about 5 hours. 2) Don't cut the straps on the monster box, instead flip it over and separate the ends of the strap where they are heat pressed together. You could easily re-seal the box if you were inclined to do so. 3) There is no "mint receipt" in monster boxes post 2012, so don't be alarmed when you do not see one. 4) All coins were dated 2014 as advertised. 5) The heaviest one was 31.4 grams, the lightest one was 31.14 grams. 6) I did not get lucky and find any anomalies such as double-strikes. 7) The 2 AAA batteries on my scale ran out 3/4 of the way through, this seems incredibly inefficient to me. 8) They all passed the magnet test. 9) It's difficult to scratch your nose while wearing white cotton gloves. 10) It's difficult to scratch your dogs nose when wearing white cotton gloves. 11) A rare-earth magnet will actually stick to a granite counter top (who knew?).
If it is a sealed Monster Box, why on earth would anyone open it up and do a magnet test on every single coin in every tube? I know some silver stackers get a bit paranoid at times, but that does seem a bit OTT to me...
I think you've under-done it, unless you calibrated your scales before and after weighing, recorded the weight of each coin, and ran some statistical tests to confirm that the weights conform with a semi-Gaussian distribution.
Why don't you buy a huge magnet, and literally just hold it above a tube. If one of them is fake, it should stick!
I don't know, I guess I started because there was no mint receipt in the box and a few of the tube caps were not put on correctly, so I became suspicious. I since learned that the mint stopped putting a receipt in the box starting with 2013, however, by that time I had already started. Also, the seal really does not mean much, its very easy to take off and put back on again. So now I am 100% certain everything is on the up and up and my tubes are all head-up and oriented the same for every coin so I'm a happy camper.