APPRAISER: We don't often on the ROADSHOW get to talk about female heroes.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: So I could not be more thrilled that you brought in this 1990 first-place championship trophy for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race won by Susan Butcher, your wife!
GUEST: Yes. Susan and I met out on the Iditarod trails. We just, uh, got stuck in a snowstorm and met in 1981. Susan was born in Cambridge, Mass.
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: And she always loved dogs-- it was her passion. And so she became a dog walker. And because she loved it so much, her mother bought her, um, a sled. And then they moved up to Maine, where her grandmother lived, and then got one dog, and then moved to Colorado, where her father was, and started mushing in the mountains there, and thought it was great, but it wasn't wild enough for her. So then she moved to Alaska in about 1974.
APPRAISER: This is a marathon-- it's a thousand-mile race.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: Yeah. What are some of the challenges or issues that, that you could encounter?
GUEST: Weather is your number one. Could be super-cold, let's say 40 or 50 below zero. You have to be able to protect yourself, but also protect the dogs.
APPRAISER: Susan won '86, right? '87, correct?
GUEST: '88.
APPRAISER: Uh, '88, and then got second in '89. This was Susan's fourth win...
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: ...in 1990 for the Iditarod. It seems to me she had an extraordinary record. 17 races.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: Scratched once, 19th in her first, but top ten the other 15 times? How was it for her being a woman out there with largely men? How was she perceived? How was she accepted?
GUEST: It was very difficult. There was a lot of, sort of, I'd say resentment, because people hadn't come to respect her abilities.
APPRAISER: She set the record and broke her own record in, in 1990.
GUEST: She...
APPRAISER: She broke her record, with...
GUEST: She, yeah.
APPRAISER: ...11 days, one hour, 53 minutes.
GUEST: Yeah, right.
APPRAISER: What do you think her legacy was...
GUEST: Well...
APPRAISER: ...in regard to the Iditarod?
GUEST: You know, I think Title IX, if you remember that.
APPRAISER: '72.
GUEST: Of course-- you know, it was quite a turning point in women's sports and just the evolution of how you thought about it. And Susan, uh, then became, because she competed in a field with men, kind of an icon of that experience. She was representing the ability of women to compete on an equal level.
APPRAISER: She retired in 1994. Right. Why did she decide to retire?
GUEST: She decided to retire 'cause we wanted kids. And the next year, we had a beautiful daughter, named Tekla, in 1995. And then we had another one, her name is Chisana, which is the name of the place that Susan lived in the Wrangell Mountains.
APPRAISER: Susan really transcended sport.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: And she was at the top of this, 'cause there's only a handful of mushers who have won the Iditarod four times.
GUEST: Yes. And I think there's only one that's won it five times. Unfortunately, Susan passed away in 2006.
GUEST: Yeah, yep.
APPRAISER: But she leaves the legacy.
GUEST: After Susan had passed away, I still wanted them to know what it was that their mother loved. So when they were 11 years old, what I did is, I got them, we trained up dog teams and we took some friends and we mushed all the way to Nome. And my younger daughter sees the aurora over her head and she sees an animal around the corner. She sees birds flying, and she goes, "This is why Mom loved it."
APPRAISER: I heard that there's a T-shirt out there that says, "In Alaska, men are men and women win the Iditarod."
GUEST: Yeah, yeah. (chuckles):
APPRAISER: She, she's an Alaskan hero to all. I also think that there are a number of, of huge fans of the Iditarod in its 50 years of existence, from 1973 to 2023.
GUEST: Yeah, yep, yep.
APPRAISER: So it's a narrow but very passionate group...
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: ...that would be collected and would be interested, particularly since it's the last trophy that Susan won, her own legacy, and the fact she won it four times. I would put an insurance value of $100,000 on this trophy.
GUEST: (coughs out): No way! (laughing): No way-- no way! Well, give me the insurance company's name.
(both laugh)
APPRAISER: If you were ever going to auction it off, it'd be $50,000 to $75,000 for an auction estimate.
GUEST: Uh-huh, wow.
APPRAISER: But obviously, priceless.
