An Appraiser Put $35,000 on Dottie Pepper’s First Solheim Cup Trophy
Waterford made the player copy for the inaugural 1990 matches. Pepper says only 18 existed and that the mold was destroyed.
Leila Dunbar hit the appraisal snag right away: She could not point to a Solheim Cup trophy that had already crossed an auction block.
Dunbar was at Dottie Pepper’s home for “Antiques Roadshow: Celebrity Edition,” looking at the reduced-size Waterford crystal trophy Pepper received after the first Solheim Cup. The segment aired May 3, 2021. Dunbar’s answer was to put at least $35,000 on the insurance form and leave the auction question open.
Pepper still had the trophy 31 years after the Lake Nona matches. That fact was visible on camera. The $35,000 was Dunbar’s insurance figure, not a record of money changing hands.
Pepper Brought Home the First One
The inaugural Solheim Cup was played in Orlando in 1990 with eight women on each team. Kathy Whitworth captained the Americans. Pepper, then listed in LPGA records as Dottie Mochrie, went 2-1 as the United States won 11 1/2 to 4 1/2.
Pepper told Dunbar that Waterford made a smaller Cup for every player and both captains. She remembered the message that came with them: “By the way, this is it.” Waterford had broken the mold, she said. “There are 18 of them. And that’s it.” The count fits the 16 players and two captains at Lake Nona.
No Waterford order sheet or factory ledger was located for this article. The production of 18 and the destroyed mold therefore remain Pepper’s account, not a manufacturer-certified edition statement.
Ownership is easier to follow. Pepper described receiving the trophy at the inaugural match, then displayed it for the PBS cameras in 2021. The recipient was sitting beside the piece and explaining how it reached her. An auction house would not have to build that part of the story from an anonymous consignor’s paperwork.
Dunbar Looked to Ryder Cup Trophies
The lack of a prior Solheim Cup sale forced Dunbar into the neighboring market. Player and captain trophies from the Ryder Cup had sold for amounts ranging from $10,000 to $170,000, she said. The top of that range belonged to a trophy awarded to Sam Snead.
Dunbar did not borrow one of those prices and paste it onto Pepper’s crystal. She considered the first-year connection, the limited distribution Pepper described and the identity of the recipient. Her conclusion was an insurance value of “a minimum of $35,000.”
Dunbar was careful about what the $35,000 meant. She was talking about insurance in May 2021, with no Solheim Cup auction result in front of her. No bidder paid that amount, and the appraisal is now five years old.
Pepper appeared in six Solheim Cups and compiled a 13-5-2 record, worth 14 points. None of that had happened when Waterford made this piece. At Lake Nona, she had just gone 2-1 in a competition being played for the first time.
What Would Have to Accompany the Trophy
Pepper was showing the trophy, not offering it for sale. If it ever did reach an auction house, the PBS broadcast would belong in the provenance file. So would a current statement from Pepper identifying the piece and tracing her ownership from 1990.
An auction house would still have work to do. The televised appraisal did not provide a cataloger’s measurements, weight, full inscription record or condition report. Close photographs of the Waterford mark and every engraved surface would be necessary. Any chip, polishing, repair or replaced component would have to be disclosed rather than judged from a screen image.
For now, 18 is Pepper’s number. Waterford paperwork could confirm it, but none was found for this article. An auction catalog would have to say that plainly.
The Solheim Cup reached its 20th playing at Bernardus in 2026. Pepper’s crystal came from the first. When she placed it in front of the PBS cameras, the match at Lake Nona was no longer only an 11 1/2-to-4 1/2 score in an LPGA record book. One of the women who played that week still had the trophy she carried home.