(705c) Mexican Numismatic Profiles: Volume 2 Issue 7: Last Revision: 06/05/05

Mexican Numismatic Writers:

T.V. Buttrey: A Mexican Numismatic Enigma?

Who is T.V. Buttrey?  What does Buttrey have to do with Mexican coins? Has Buttrey ever written anything about Mexican coins? Where is T.V. Buttrey?

These are the four most frequently encountered questions about a man that is a Mexican Numismatic enigma. For a number of years I have wrestled with these questions without a lot of success.  I tried a Google search where I found 164 references.  It was here, in an E-Sylum Newsletter (Volume 7 Number 44, dated October 10, 2004), that I found a website (www.fake-gold-bars.com.uk) co-authored by Buttrey about some questionable US and Mexican gold and silver bars that is very interesting.

So let’s see if we can give you a little more information about this elusive character named T.V. Buttrey and shed a little light on the man behind so much mystery and controversy.

Theodore V. Buttrey: The Man

T.V. Buttrey was born on December 29, 1929 in Havre, Montana. He became interested in coins as a boy and has pursued this interest with much vigor since then.  Buttrey received his primary education at Phillips Exeter Academy; he received a BA at Princeton in 1950, and achieved a PhD there in 1953 with a dissertation entitled “Studies in the Coinage of Mark Antony”. Mr. Buttrey currently resides in Cambridge, England where he has lived for more than 20 years.

Professor Theodore V. Buttrey: The Scholar and Teacher

Upon graduating Buttrey taught at Yale for 10 years and then moved to the University of Michigan for another 25 years of teaching. After taking early retirement Professor Buttrey moved to England and where he was associated with Faculty of Classics at Cambridge University. He held the prestigious title of Keeper of Coins and Medals in the Fitzwilliam Museum [the University’s Museum of Fine Arts] from 1988-1991. Today he is still active at the Fitzwilliam Museum helping the museum build the world’s largest numismatic auction catalog library.

While Professor Buttrey may have dropped off the Mexican Numismatic Radar after the A Guide Book of Mexican Coins: 1822 to Date ceased to be published, he is still busy as a teacher and scholar. He is currently working on three new books: (1) Roman Imperial Coinage: Volume 2.1 (the Flavian Emperors) with Ian Carradice (2) the ancient coins from two excavations in Rome and Libya (3) a corpus of the coins of the Roman Republican moneyer P. Crepusius with Giles Carter.    

T.V. Buttrey: The Mexican Numismatist & Collector?

One of the greatest things that happened in the field of Mexican Numismatics Literature, during the “dark age”, was when two of the greats T.V. Buttrey and Clyde Hubbard meshed gears in about 1971.  These two giants came together to create “the reference book” for Republican and Modern Mexican coinage and the rest is history.

Professor Buttrey still collects Mexican coins and he informed me in a recent email he still has about 2,500 examples in his collection today. He stated he has a “good spread” but no longer owns anything “astonishing”. He further stated he sold many of his classic Mexican rarities, including a Chihuahua Ca 1888 M $1, years ago in order to help pay for the education of his children. I’m sure what he considers to be a “good spread” might be called a “world class collection” in today’s terms. Maybe I can wrangle an invitation to see the Buttrey Collection and report back on it when I travel to England next year?

In the mid-1990s Buttrey still kept his fingers in the “Mexican Pie” as Christie’s-Spink had him help catalog the fantastic Pablo Gerber Collection when they were selected to offer it for public auction in 1995 and 1996.

T.V. Buttery: The Author

While Buttrey is far better known for his works outside the field of Mexican Numismatics this is the area of our interests so we will cover these works only. Buttrey’s first effort in and for our hobby occurred with the publishing of The Coinage of Mexico Since 1905 in 1953. Since then he has penned several other important works for our hobby.

Ten years later Buttrey published A Guide Book of Mexican Decimal Coins: 1863-1963 that soon became the standard reference work for these coins. His next work, Central America under the Mexican Empire, 1822-1823, appeared in the American Numismatic Society Museum Notes Volume 13 in 1967.

In 1969 Buttrey introduced one of the greatest tools ever conceived for Mexican coin collectors and dealers, the 1^st Edition of A Guide Book of Mexican Coins: 1822 to Date. This small digest sized book caused a great stir in our hobby and beginning with the 2^nd Edition in 1971 Buttrey teamed up another great legend of Mexican Numismatics Clyde Hubbard. Together they produced five editions of this work that can still be seen on the bourse floors of coin shows in the US and Mexico. Over the years I have personally seen both dealers and collectors guard their copies of this little book, with all of their many notations, as if they were made of gold.  The 6^th and last edition was published in 1992 and with its demise so ended what many thought was one of the key ingredients of our hobby.  

During the run of the Guide Book Buttrey also authored another little known work for the American Numismatic Society, Coinage of the Americas, in 1973. However Professor Buttrey isn’t finished yet with the field of Mexican Numismatics. He told Mexican Coin Magic, in an email earlier this year; he has another uncompleted work about the coinage of Republican Mexico during the Maximilian era that holds a lot of surprises. Of course we offered our forum as a place to first electronically publish this original new research. At this moment we don’t know if we can persuade him to allow us to publish this study as soon, as it is ready?

T.V. Buttrey: The Gunslinger

Since September 1973, when Buttrey first publicly addressed the fake gold bars in a paper presented at the International Numismatic Congress in New York, we have seen one of the longest running “gun battles” in the history of numismatics take place between two greatly feared opponents: John J. Ford and T.V. Buttrey. Even the demise of Ford hasn’t ended the conflict that continues on today.

While some in numismatic circles spout the virtues of Ford, Buttrey has a greatly different opinion of his antagonist. The battle once raged long and hard across the Atlantic, from the shores of the United States all the way to England. About the only venue and tactic not used in this historic bout were fisticuffs as the protagonists squared off against each other in person, in the numismatic news media, and in the US Courts.

Buttrey contends Ford was a forger, crook, and charlatan of the highest magnitude who was directly responsible for creating the greatest fakes ever seen in the field of modern numismatics.  On their website Fake Gold Bars (www.fake-gold-bars.com.uk) both Buttrey and co-author John Kleeberg detail all of the information they have been able to piece together about Ford, his cronies, and the products they created that have fooled some of the greatest US and Mexican Numismatists for generations.

Other well known, and highly regarded members of the US numismatic world disagree with Buttrey’s condemnation of John J. Ford and have voiced their disagreement in the numismatic press.  Surely this debate will go on well into the future? Like so many questions in the numismatic world today, opinions are many, but facts are few and many times overlooked as we spend way too much time listening to people’s opinions who have a vested interest in these disagreements.       

After reading this short article you can readily see that T.V. Buttrey is no longer a Mexican Numismatic Enigma, but is in fact a great scholar and teacher in the field of World Numismatics.

Sources

Fake Gold Bars website (www.fake-gold-bars.com.uk)

E-Sylum Newsletters: Volume 7 Number 44, and Volume 8 Number 33

An Interview with John J. Ford, Jr., by Mark Van Winkle for Heritage Auction Galleries in Legacy Magazine

American Numismatic Society Newsletter (Fall 1999)

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