How to do string comparison in VBA if a string has an inequality operator?

I have an Excel sheet that can have the following string in one of its cells:

Valid Test for ≥ 30% ABCD?


When I capture this value in a variable and output it in the Immediate window, it looks like this:

?strVal
Valid Test for = 30% ABCD?


I want to check whether the cell contains this value, and currently I'm using:

Select Case strVal
Case "Valid Test for = 30% ABCD?"
doSomething
'... other Case statements
Case Else
doSomethingElse
End Select


This string match always fails, though, and I get the following results when I investigate in the Immediate window:

?strVal="Valid Test for = 30% ABCD?"
False

?asc(mid(strVal,16,1))
61

?asc("=")
61


So apparently what's happening here is that the "≥" symbol is being rendered in VBA output as "=" both in appearance and ASCII code, but somehow it's still not equivalent to "=" in string comparison. How can I get the string match that I'm looking for?

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