Excellent points, austrokiwi. In their egocentric way, the American
TPG's are attempting to foist the American grading system upon international markets which don't necessarily give it any credence. And frankly, I don't believe their business model - don't forget, here it's "fiduciary responsibility to shareholders" and nothing else - will allow them to acquire the human assets necessary to reliably attribute and grade the vast panoply of World coinage. IMO the successful World
TPG will not be from the US. Indeed, I could see it better done by a country-specific consortium of independent graders sharing "overlap" skills with their nearby issuers.
For instance, a Sydney-based
TPG might reasonably employ people whose expertise covered New Zealand coinage, as well as maybe Indonesia and some of SE Asia. A Hong Kong-based
TPG could cover China and surrounding, etc....the places individual experts might reasonably branch their knowledge out to.
Great Britain's would cover UK issues, and most of the large European countries might support their own specialists. Russia and Germany, with their centuries of varied issuers, would each require their own. And so on.
Only question is, does the market exist?