When your attorney prepares your bankruptcy petition, he or she will ask you for a list of all of your personal property. Along with each item, you will have to list the value of the property, as required by the Bankruptcy Code. Bankruptcy Code Section 506 requires the use of the “replacement value as of the date of the filing of the petition.”
This value is what it would cost for the debtor to buy the property from a retail vendor, taking the property’s age and condition into account. One rule of thumb some attorneys use is to use the price that you would get for it if you were to sell it at a garage sale.