amanitas contain ibotenic acid, not psilocybin. There’s more crap out there in books and on the web than any other drug IME, even the best resources have poor descriptions. They have a more interesting history than any potential recreational use unless you really know your stuff.
with picking, unless you are going for straight muscaria there is quite a high chance of getting hurt, it’s where the horror stories of kids getting poisoned come from, not liberty caps. You really can grab a death cap, or one of the angels quite easily, even for an experienced guy, the features that look so prominent in the photos aren’t normally there in the field, often a microscope is the only way of IDing them correctly. Even if you get something strong in Ibotenic acid/muscimol it’s not normally a pleasant feeling, you start by shaking and your mouth waters, then typical you just doze off and have uncomfortable dreams. If you open your eyes things look dark and dull, perhaps a little menacing. If you push the dose you’ll end up with painful stomach cramps. There are ways to bypass the worse bits to push the trip but it takes a lot of effort and the trip is nothing compared to psilocybin IMO.
As for buying, no-one cultivates them, they are common and market small, which means that someone is picking them. Like liberty caps they are symbiotic making a grow near impossible except to prove you’ve done it as a one off. Buying is safe-ish with muscaria, not with panther caps. Also the preparation after harvest is what converts the ibo to muscimol and I’ve never heard of a hunter doing this properly to sell, the few that do chase them keep them for personal use.
The last thing to know is that potency varies across the individual fruit and fruit to fruit. Like all medicinal mushrooms, the best ones are the smaller ones, but larger ones are picked to sell as they make more money.
