The things left at a yard sale can expose how personal value really was.

The things nobody wants are the ones whose value was entirely personal. What is left at the end of the day was meaningful only inside your particular life, and the market has no interest in it because meaning is not transferable. That is a slightly bleak discovery and it is also a clarifying one.

If you are clearing things out, expect that some of what mattered most will be worth nothing. That is not a judgment on the object or on you. And it is worth telling someone the story behind an item now, since the story is the part that could actually be passed on.