I always go to the category and see the Pagerank on that page, not the homepage. This applies to expired domains, regular, sideways... whatever.
Have not tried any dropped domain directory, but there were so many people love to submit directory with nice pagerank and there were so many announcement for PRX directory. I have noticed many directories selling 30+ sitewide links which are PR 5-6, people would find they die out quickly and their money fly away. To be honestly, all my directories go from PR0, I am glad to see my babies to be strong.
any idea how to check it that which site is expired domain site may be any of us can be the next victim of this stuff
check the google indexed pages - if there arnt many means its new. check the inner pages. they will be PR0 check the domain stats - it probably only just got renewed