A rancher wants to grow his herd, so he buys the land next door. He clears the trees, puts up a fence, builds a shelter for storms, sets out a trough and water. Standard stuff.
Now, what were those trees worth?
To the rancher, nothing. They were in the way. His business is raising livestock, and the trees sat between him and more grazing land, so he cleared them and moved on.
But across town there's a furniture maker who would have paid good money for that same timber. Right species, right grain, exactly what he needs. To him those trees were valuable. To the rancher they were brush.
Did the rancher make a mistake? No. Finding the furniture maker, knowing which trees he'd want, cutting and hauling and selling them, all of that takes time, skill, and knowledge the rancher doesn't have and shouldn't want. His job is cattle. Chasing the timber would have pulled him off it.
That's the whole thing about value, and most people have it backwards. Value isn't a property of the object. It's a relationship between the object and someone who has the time, the skills, the knowledge, and the desire to do something with it. The trees didn't change. The person looking at them did.
Every business lives on this. You are not sitting on assets. You are sitting on things that are valuable to a specific someone, if you can find them, and worthless to everyone else.