PR has nothing to do with the sandbox period. I’ve seen sites as high as PR6 that are still in the sandbox. The amount of effort and time it takes to reach a PR6 would probably be the amount of time the probationary period is set for in most cases.
The easiest way to check if you are in the sandbox is to do an allinanchor search (allinanchor:my keyword phrase) on GG for your targeted keyword and compare that to your actual rankings in GG. The allinanchor: should be within 10 or 20 spots of your actual ranking. To give you an idea, one of my keywords is:
allinanchor = 47
actual ranking = >700
A simple place to check this without having to wade through the SERPs yourself is the McDar Datacenter Quick Check tool at:
http://www.mcdar.net/q-check/datatool.asp
Another way you can tell is by your Yahoo and MSN rankings as compared to GG. For the same keyword:
GG = >700
Yahoo = 11
MSN = 10
That normal measures catch up to sites after a while then through fixing what’s wrong your site rises.
Freepokerleague, you seem to be suggesting there are simple triggers to release your site from the sandbox. If you know what these triggers are, please share as I would desperately like to be out of the sandbox.