A label reading worthless can mean only that the market does not share your reason for caring.

Market value answers one narrow question: what someone else would currently pay. It says nothing about whether an object holds a person’s handwriting, a decade of your evenings, or the only surviving trace of a room you grew up in. Valuers are not being unkind when they say a thing is worth nothing. They are simply answering a question you were not asking.

If you are sorting possessions, your own or someone else’s, keep the two questions apart. Decide first what you would grieve to lose, then let price decide only among the things that remain.