First post with new account, but have been reading this forum for 3+ years.
I've been off the markets since the trouble this summer, and I come back to find people talking about direct deals on this sub. I found what I was looking for in this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/7mxwsy/dr_lysergic_3g_cocaine/
I contacted Dr. Lysergic via email. The vendor is very friendly and professional. But today I see Grams has thrown in the towel. So how am I to confirm the PGP and email address? The PGP the Dr. sent in email matches the one on Zion, and I am almost ready to order. But first want to check and see what everyone else is doing in this situation now that Grams is down.
Also, aside what anyone thinks about doing a direct deal, it still seems useful to talk about ways to confirm PGPs.
If it matches the one on a major market (and the account is active/has sales), that's about as 'sure' as you're likely to get. But, AR is currently hosting a backup of the Grams vendor db, scraped sales & PGP, on an onion site (my stuff was on there, which was a pleasant surprise).