With all of the drama surrounding the major markets lately, such as the sheep fiasco, stolen coins, ddos's, and SR2 & TorMarket arguing, I'm not sure why more people aren't talking about The Marketplace.
Disclaimer: We are a vendor at The Marketplace, however, we chose TMP (TMP does NOT equal TorMarketPlace) because we believe they are the most security competent market out currently.
The Marketplace has no on-site wallet. They use P2P escrow, which prevents (or at least greatly limits) their ability to run off with our coin.
The Marketplace forces pgp in all messages. This may seem like a pain, but we personally wouldn't have it any other way.
TMPSchultz, the main contact at TMP, comes off as EXTREMELY competent and professional when it comes to all things security and the site. All problems addressed have been solved relatively immediately, and we already have more faith in him than we do in any other person involved in any other market currently.
TMP uses I2P rather than Tor, which may be a major deterrent to many people. However, after getting your hands a little dirty, I2P is not much more complicated to use than Tor. As I understand it, I2P was made with hidden services in mind, but Tor was meant more for browsing clearweb anonymously. There are also plenty of guides in /r/TheMarketplace and on TMP forums that should have you up and running fairly quickly.
One downfall of TMP is the lack of many listings currently. How would a site grow without more people becoming interested in it though? There are vendors for several of the major products shipping in the US already, at the very least. We hope that more will come as soon as people understand that TMP already addresses some of the issues still present with other major markets.
I'm all for it, but I have to follow the vendors. So far there's not much for sale on TM that interests me.