Thank you for the insightful thoughts. I def am seeing that the patience and lengthy research has been so far the way to go. I have a few cycles under my belt but always sourced stuff through a mutual acquaintance. Lately been trying to go solo, less baggage and less connection this way.
To sum up, last year or two years ago when I started lurking more heavily on the boards, I would have def pulled a trigger on a lot of bad sources and some good ones that got busted (cat). Waiting it out and watching the currents flow has been interesting and very eye opening.