In general, certifications are valuable to those that value them. While this statement may be kind of lame, I have run into employers that do not value certifications at all; they want hard experience. And then there are some, particularly where there are contractual obligations (very common in the DoD), where a certain percentage of employed personnel have to have this-or-that cert. Generally, DoD Directive 8570 is a big driver for that.
Personally, I think any two-year level IT professional should have the CompTIA trifecta as a standard (A+, Net+, and Sec+), along with one OS cert like Linux+ or MCP. As to the A+, if I had regular bench techs or touch-labor client specialists working for me, I would insist they have A+ before they start work - because that way, there is a third party validation for what they do. And if they teach, they better have the cert before they even think about starting teaching. And having gone through the 1001 and 1002 material (I'm retaking these tests myself), I think the content validates hardware skills well enough for their intent.
Overall, though, I've also seen where someone has the cert and does not have the skills. It happens. People cheat. They use braindumps because they see the value of having the credential, but do not value earning it themselves (they just want the job) - so this erodes trust in the certification. While CompTIA, Microsoft, and Cisco (among others) take steps to make it hard for cheaters, there will always be "paper certs" out there, stealing certification value for their own purposes.
So, in the end, the more general we ask, "Is the such-and-such cert valuable" the harder it is to answer. There are studies that validate it. But to quote an old D&D gamer rule, "Specific trumps General".
Hopefully my pontificating has answered the question to someone's satisfaction.
/r