First things first: The rumors appear to be true. Whomever took over for the original PCubeSensei evidently coulnd't handle his/her shit, and after months of customers complaining about very slow turn around times, and ultimately to most recently customers simply not getting their goods, PCubeSensei was "Restricted" on Agora right before it went down, and now on Abraxas the PCubeSensei account is suspended. Hallelujah! That punk ass bitch! I'm glad the markets are catching up to this piece of shit. It's too bad too cuz evidently the original PCubeSensei was on point, but whomever he assigned to be the steward of the account just couldnt deal, and his constant updates to his vendor page said as much - empty promises, excuses, and long periods without logging in. So this asshole the original PCS handed responsibility to just destroyed his rep.
Secondly: My take and theory on the H scene is that its fragmenting and its quickly turning into a sellers market. Two reasons: First, RSS was busted and he had a decent share of the market. Secondly, Agora is gone (for now, forever - anyone's guess), and as a result some of the better H vendors that were there are either a) holding off until whatever vulnerability Agora mentioned in their public notice is addressed across other markets, or b) they're just taking their time setting up shop on the other markets for any number of reasons. Which leads me to another point: Agora really did seem to be the more trustworthy of the markets for vendors. Other markets seem to have a lot of baggage associated with them, where Agora seems to have had less of it. So with Ag going down, the H vendors are fragmenting. Two other well reputed vendors from Ag, LemonadeStand and AlexSosa1KG, are also hard to track down. TLS is up on Nucleus (see link below) and AS1KG is nowhere to be found, opting instead for direct deals (again, because of the Agora vulnerability - he got spooked, he practically said as much).
So where does this leave buyers?
- RSS is gone forever
- PCubeSensei is a bitch
- TLS pitched his tent up on Nucleus (/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/3ivd4q/a_realsupremesmoke_substitute_proving_hard_to_find/)
- AS1kg has yet to pitch his tent on a market
- NOCTURN4L is around but he only deals with tar (no matter what he says, its all tar)
- CaliClare appears to be MIA, and has been for a while
- DragonCove appears to be MIA, and has been for a while yet someone is pretending to be him on another market (Middle Earth I think)
- Expressman/bestman also seems MIA, or pulled a scam - either way, he's nowhere to be found
- I'm surely not including a few others truly reputable H vendors, but these are the ones that were most well reputed - those who really delivered on quality product, with legit reviews/ratings, and who also engaged here on this sub to varying degrees.
From what I've seen, any other vendors up on Nucleus, Abraxas, or Alphabay are either selling total garbage, or they're scamming. (Note to other H vendors: If you are a vendor up on those markets NOT selling garbage or scamming, you might want to start getting the word out or start dealing with your PR issues, cuz those are the rumors and you're nowhere on this sub to defend yourself, and there's a market to be had here. Get your community college Marketing 101 books out!)
So that's my take on the current H scene. At this point it's a fragmented market but one with lots of demand and very little reliable, professional supply with quality product. And that makes it a sellers market, so we might expect to see prices climb unless some of these reliable and reputed vendors come back or others can get things going.
One more thing: would love to get a master list going of sorts, you know like a "Best H vendors" list, but I couldnt do that alone. And that list would have to be managed well - just cuz one person says good things wouldnt be enough, there'd have to be some criteria. Anyway just a thought.