Still looking for PageRank?

I am starting to come round to the conclusion that PR is a bit of a self-fulfilling dream... after all, what is it's value?
Does it get you SERP (search engine results position)? seemingly not as I have several sites with little or no PR that achieve first-page results for specific targeted key-words.
Many of us were slave to PR when we started blogging, and the weeping could be heard from afar when Google slapped us all for trying to 'game' PR with viral schemes. Some desperately hung on, determined to show their contrite hearts to Daddy Google by refusing paid posts and removing 'do follow' from their blogs.
Did it make any difference? Did traffic cease or did our sites disappear from the search results? Maybe there were some short-term effects here and there, maybe Google has learned some lessons and maybe there is not so much money being thrown at paid bloggers, but not an awful lot has really changed.
I am promoting a new site at the moment, and have concentrated almost exclusively on 'on-page' optimisation - the type of SEO that doesn't rely on outside links and therefore is not affected by PR. My conclusions are that you can certainly get ranked on page 1 without PR- and most of the time, I am only held off the top-spot by Wikipedia... So I leave you with this... What is the value of PageRank?
And my answer is that you really only need to think about it if you are competing for a very highly sought after keyword. You may easily get SERP for a cleverly thought out associated phrase with virtually no 'off-page' optimisation at all. Of course, if many of those who sponsored posts took this view, they would stop paying for links except for those sickeningly 'popular' recurring promotions (I leave the themes of these to your imagination), so I hope sponsors will ignore my views and continue to send interesting and varied opportunities.