No reasonably ok directory owner is taking care of pr distribution, its so not controlled by anything other than google. Regarding what you belive you would get from a particular pr page, it would depend on other out going links from the page and all sorts of other things none of us will know about either, its so not like how you imagine. Do you really have a grand to spend? i can give you a permanent link for very little, but im afraid pr is not part of the deal. So your happy and sad about pr? you have 1k to spend still? or now just happy that google affected how links are sold? Show me your site please? what current pr do you have on your homepage and internal pages? and how have you promoted so far, can help you better if i understand your situation and past efforts properly.
It isn't totally out of our hands. Strong linkbuilding to the homepage and to category pages, additional to lots of unique content on the inner pages will bring good PR on both the homepage and the inner pages.
I think google did kill a lot of the inner page ranks, but that it not to say that we cannot control our page ranks through strong link building as mikey already said. At the moment you are going to find it hard to find a lot of directories with high inner pr.