Oh lala. So much to say, so little time. Please beware of hardening of the categories

and do not use "illicit" illicitly. People have the right to disagree with you, as I am sure you will agree.
The great big important cost of TPGs is not grading. It is staffing. Even the equipment used does not measure up to staffing cost. This means that to remain "competitive", the TPGs need turnover and anal retentiveness when it comes to salary cost. If anyone would offer them a semblance of software that could grade say within 5 points and save significant grading time, they would jump on it hand and feet. If you believe for your own reasons that grading is objective, you will have difficulty to explain why there is no software to do it. If grading could be captured in algorithms, it would have happened already. You might also have problems with the fact that mints still use humans for quality control.
Graders make only one judgement for one party, according to their taste and the whole grading cycle is a matter of several days, while potential buyers can all be sent a picture in real time at no marginal cost and to be interpreted by the buyer's standards. Compare the statistical fact that equity has a tendency to move up on Fridays and down on Mondays, which can only be explained by the concept of weekend, which should not have an influence on equity prices. I would not be surprised if coins would be graded higher on a Friday than on a Monday. It would be human. The comparison with chick sexing is of course wrong, as that is a case of firm data that is just hard to spot, rather than data overflow, a large noise/data ratio and a state of mind.
I can think of many catalogues without prices (and prefer them, with the exception of KM). If some people do something futile, that doesn't make it useful.
Actually, I think Bushan's point of view is entirely reasonable: get as much information as you can and make up your mind. That doesn't mean you have to make up your mind in terms of VF or EF. I think Prosit's 2-grade coin grading system is sufficient and to the point.
Peter