Don't throw anything away!
Take pictures and post them here....we will help.
Linda C

Unless your grandmother was a lady of means, it is unlikely you will find anything of great value. Are you considering having an estate sale presuming there are furnishings etc.? There are small companies that manage these sales and usually they have a good feel for values. Aside from that, look for marks on the bottom of china and other items of interest. By and large, items are only as valuable as some one is willing to pay.

Depending on what you might consider to be "great value", there are a lot of small ordinary sorts of things that are worth a surprising amount of money.
That's how so many people are able to buy at garage and estate sales, re-sell on eBay and make $25,000 to $30,000 a year.
Linda C

Oh please don't ever assume that elderly people of little means don't have things of value. You couldn't be more mistaken! In my mother in laws estate auction an old paper mache' pumpkin brought $150. She had box upon box of old unusual items. Just the little things like shoe button hooks, and old post cards were hot items. Her dining room set went for a fortune. We brought home BOXES of collectible pottery she used to root cuttings in, with stamps on them like McCoy and Brush.

I'd inventory each and every item and digitally photograph them for a start as you sort through the house and put the items of obvious value and questionable value in groups. The really mundane things can be donated, or taken to a consignment store, or advertised in a paper. The rest......well, it's up to you how much time you want to spend tracking down value but unless there is a rush on it, you get back in proportion to the time spent on researching it.

Some auctioneers are very good at recognising antiques or collectibles. In my area there are a couple who have a reputation of putting on good sales and do not make many mistakes letting really choice items slip through their fingers. They stand to make more money, the more money you make. But, likewise, I have been to sales where the antique hounds never showed up due to poor advertising or inclement weather. I have gotten many steals in this way, standing knee deep in snow or under an umbrella.

I have had antique dealers in to my own house to appraise certain antiques and make offers. Nothing says you have to sell items to them. But given you invite more than one, and see interest in the same merchandise, you can get a feel that it's worth something.

LOL....But By the same though I have stood in the 10 degree freeze and sweltered in the 100 degree sun only to see the things I was looking for go for well above the usual price.
I have a friend who inherited a big old house full, just packed with 3 generations of "stuff". They kept the Sarouk rugs and the marble topped walnut stuff and the cut glass and the sterling silver, Weller pottery etc, but hired someone to clean out the attic and basement. He got a coal chute and just piled the stuff down and into a truck. Old fruit jars, pottery, magazines, postcards, dance programs costumes, baby clothes.
Years later, Pete asked what the contractor did with all that junk....he said "I sent 2 kids to college on the proceeds".
All old stuff is worth something to someone.
Linda C

What's elderly? Some folks have "good stuff" by accident. Others, like myself, have good stuff on purpose. I've been to a lot of estate sales and in my experience most of the good stuff has been removed by family. Of course there are exceptions. Then there's the Antique Roadshow thing where grandmaw left me that old painting she had over her mantle that turns out to be by "X" famous painter and it is now worth six figures.

IF you have lots of time and storage space, sort it into categories: textiles, glassware, ephemera, books, furniture, etc. Now start with one grouping and sort again by condition. For instance, badly worn garments, chipped glassware and pottery, badly damaged furniture may have little value. Set these aside for later, unless they are obviously beyond practical repair. Now, get some books and try to figure out what you really have. Glassware, china and pottery should have marks that will help you with identification and from there you can start to find values. Textiles are tougher--it's difficult to determine values for old clothing without really knowing what's of interest to collectors and then condition is all important. Books are fairly easy to research--first editions of famous authors can be quite valuable and are found even in homes with modest incomes because at the time of the initial release the book would have been fairly inexpensive. We recently found a first edition Zane Grey that's worth a respectable $50-100. Ditto for certain kinds of costume jewelery. The smartest way would be to find a respectable appraiser and have him/her come and do the job for you. The easiest way is to just hold an estate sale or auction with a good, knowledgeable auctioneer. The rule always holds: Any item is worth what someone is willing to pay the day of the sale.

BTW--I might be able to help date fabrics and identify sewing items. I'm a professional quilter and sewing machine collector and collect sewing notions, buttons, tools, sewing ephemera, and fabric. I'm considered an "expert" on sewing machines, and am knowledgeable on other sewing-related stuff.

Annie

Mostly glassware won't be marked...afew of the cut glass makers marked their pieces and a few presses glass makers , like Higbee and Heisey and PresCut marked their pieces, but most did not.
Because piece is not marked does NOT mean it has less value.
Linda C

BTW Linda, we have a complete service of 12 in Heisey rose patterm as well as serving pieces and candleabras. As I said before, some people have things of value by accident and others of us have things of value on purpose. Others have offered reasonable advice to the OP and very simply if she has neither the time or interest in going through everything, she should hire some one who does and can. Still waiting to hear how old elderly is.

Thanks so much for the advice. The family has come through and taken many things. But my brother and I took things that we "thought" might have some value to research and hopefully either sell or keep to pass down.

Unfortunately we had to clear out the house for a renter and had a yardsale already. I don't think that anything of potential value (save some really old tools, something that looked like carnival glass and this one old meat grinder) got sold. The majority of the stuff was her little tchotskies and WalMart stuff. I stupidly recycled tons of glass jars (mostly canning jars) that I assumed were not worth beans. I'm going to tell myself they were all cracked so I don't lose sleep over it.

I'll start taking pictures of things that are here and post them for help.

Thank you again. You've been a big help already.

If you have any sterling or silver-plated flatware, I'll be happy to help identify patterns or odd pieces so you can research on ebay.
Hester