If you can't do it yourself, get a gunsmith to check it out before you fire it. Quite a few of them were made to fire the old 21/2" shell instead of today's 23/4" shell. I think you can still get those shorter shells from some company in France; the gunsmith should be able to tell you that, too.
Also, you'll have to go to the Winchester webpage to get the phone number, but you can call in with the serial number, and they'll tell you if that particular gun has any special value. Some of them do.
Definitely. I'm not a gunsmith, although I'd love to learn. I would never shoot an old firearm that hadn't been throughly checked by an experienced gunsmith.
FWIW, my father has two old relics that probably are worth some money (but not fireable). One is a battered .44/40 Henry rifle (he actually bagged a mulie with it in central Idaho in 1945, using a box of bullets that had been handed down with the rifle). The other is a 10 gauge extra-long double-barrelled damascus twist shotgun. I haven't looked at it in over twenty years, and I'm not sure of the make. It's a handsome piece, though.