Any reason you didn’t contact a local auctioneer, or did you talk to one and they weren’t interested?
This is especially true of low-end consumer stuff. But in general electronic /mechanical gadgets do not hold their value well after 20+ years.
A kilogram of Jupiter’s atmosphere would be fairly useless yet extremely expensive.
My mother sold some jewelry, she was given a range based on assay and the actual value after the assay.
I only have one of those pieces left (a daybed), but when my employers moved me from the US back to Spain, this idiot in HR insisted that I had to move the furniture I had bought there. I pointed out it was actually my property and that while I was grateful for the offer I had been planning on giving it to charity.
“You HAVE TO MOVE IT BACK!!!” only in bigger type. Having already run into Ms Helpful’s strange ideas of helpfulness before, being up to here of her and in the middle of several weeks of 16h days, I said “what-evah.”
So, the company paid a ton of money to transport a futon from WalMart (less than $200) and several pieces from IKEA (the bill for these having been less than $700), when it would have made much more sense to either just toss it or even, if the company wanted to be nice, to drop me a few hundred to spend in IKEA Spain 
Except for that daybed, the rest has eventually ended up in the trash.
Having recently emptied out a house full of crap that belonged to my in-laws, when my mother-in-law died and father-in-law moved in with us, we only got about $3,000 for a whole house full of possessions, and 2/3 of that amount came from jewelry and expensive liquor we managed to sell. We are also stuck with a few furs, which I plan to sell on eBay.
I’m told that fur is actually coming back into fashion but that one should expect to still get 1/10 of the original purchase price even when the stuff is in perfect shape. Still, that’s a few hundred dollars in our case, so why not do it?
Most people won’t notice the things of worth in their family’s house anyway.
I have Dragon Magazines #30-100. Twenty years ago those sold for $500+. Probably worth a few more now. I have Star Wars Comics 1-3, although the cover on #1 is torn from a moving accident. I know those are worth a few dollars, but for both of those items, my family is likely just to toss them out.
Why didn’t you just tell her that it had all burned up in a fire?
Then donated it to someone who had lost all of their furniture in a fire…
When the government started minting the sandwich coins, my grandmother started collecting the old solid silver coins. My mother inherited the collection. I suspect she has paid far more to rent the safe-deposit box than she will ever get from selling the coins.
How about gold? Its price seems to based on nothing other than its rarity. Oh, and it’s “pretty.”
why some people think it’s something to base a national currency on escapes me.
I think the basic point here is that most used stuff isn’t worth much. This is sort of true by definition.
I know some scientists who would literally give you an arm and a leg for that sample.
Rare, always able to be melted down and reused, difficult to counterfeit due to its density, chemically pretty inert so it doesn’t decay - it actually made a very good currency a few hundred years ago. The fact it was pretty for jewelry was just a bonus.
Gold does have value but the gold jewelry that most people have sold for many times the melt value, so you’re still going to lose money when selling it.
We had some appraisers go though the house, and they didn’t think anything was worth very much. We ended up giving their (very nice, Danish Modern) dining-room table and chairs to the neighbors, which we thought was a nice way to have some continutiy.
The rest we gave to Habitat for Humanity, who were willing to take it off or our hands…
A crapton of stuff out of my Nana’s house (picture living somewhere for 60+ years and never throwing anything out) went to an estate auction after she went into the nursing home and she barely got anything for it.
“Good” dishes: you know the ones that older people have but never use? Super expensive back in the day but nobody wants them now because you can’t put them in the dishwasher.
Stamp & coin collections: Thousands of dollars worth at face value, but I ended up pretty much giving it away. The stamp and coin dealers around here couldn’t give me anything for them and I just don’t have the time or inclination for eBay. I’m STILL using what stamps I can for letters and this was 3 years ago.
Yes, all my furniture is on the cloud. :dubious:
I doubt however that good quality furniture in decent shape (especially non-upholstered items) is “worthless”. I’ve sold ungodly crap for surprisingly high prices at garage sales, and if you’re unwilling to go that route* there should be used furniture dealers that will give you some $$ for good stuff, however “out of fashion” it may be.
*those into refinishing wooden items can probably make out even better.
Sure, if you’ve got a magical extract-o-matic. (Actually, do you have one? I sure could use it… though pharma could pay you billions.)
Once you actually account for extraction, isolation, purification, low yields, consumable reagents, equipment, FDA approval, and a team of well-paid scientists, you’ve probably spent millions. Meanwhile, the biotech company specializing in production of the more valuable enzymes and hormones can make them in much larger quantities for five or six figures.
Not really on point, but reminds me of a joke I’ve heard often among the musicians I jam with. Their nightmare is that they die and their spouse sells their instruments for what they TOLD the spouse the spent on them! 
Yeah - most furniture and possessions aren’t worth much if you don’t include nostalgia. I’m often shocked at how relatively inexpensive many “run of the mill” “old” things are on shows like American Pickers, Roadshow, etc. Especially if not in pristine condition.
I have several electric guitars that I assembled from individual parts I found on the internet. They are all variations on the Fender Stratocaster, most parts are genuine Fender, in all cases the parts are top shelf, quality parts. A good guitarist could take any of them on any stage in the world with good results. But, if I get run over by a bus tomorrow my survivors would be lucky to get .50 on the dollar selling them because they are “parts-o-casters”. The only way to get a good return on the money I’ve spent on them would be to part them back out and sell the parts individually on Ebay. That’s if they took the time to see what similar parts are selling for. Highly unlikely that would happen. So, they’re not worthless but in the event of my demise, some guitar dealer, pawnshop owner, Craigslist browser or garage sale trawler is going to get a great axe for not much money.
Wait - you mean everyone on Antiques Roadshow doesn’t have an 1850 Navajo worth over $500,000?
Yeah, I grew up with collector/antique dealers. You never know, but it is a safe bet that, per Theodore Sturgeon, 95% of everything is crap.