A Guide Book of Mexican Decimal Coins

1863-1963

By Theodore V. Buttrey, Jr.: 1963

I wonder if Professor Buttrey had any idea how much his first little guide book would impact and change Mexican coin collecting when he first introduced it? I’m sure that one of the reason’s Buttrey created this work was because he was a Mexican coin collector first and an educator second. Today few people realize just how great an innovator Buttrey was because his method for categorizing, displaying Mexican coins, and indicating their values and rarity are commonplace?

The Buttrey Mexican Coin Rarity Scale

Until Buttrey’s book was published most catalogers used some type of rarity scale using letters to indicate rarity. The letter “C” generally indicated a coin was Common, a “S” that it was Scarce, a “VS” that it was Very Scarce, and “R” meant that it was Rare. When authors wanted to indicate something with a higher rarity they might use “RR”, “RRR” or sometimes-even “RRRR”.

In 1939 Wayte Raymond, The Silver Dollars of North and South America, indicated rarity and value by three grades Fine, Very Fine, and Extra Fine. Henry Christensen (in 1958) used the lettering system in his catalog of Mexican of the Cap & Ray 8 Reales, Balance Scale Pesos, and Liberty Cap Pesos. Neil Utberg used a combination of grade versus rarity for listing Mexican coins in his The Coins of Mexico in 1963. In 1971 Robert Harris, Gold Coins of the Americas, generally used two grades that could vary for values by grade. And of course we had the 70-point rarity system used for early US Large Cents created by Dr. Sheldon, which has previously been discussed at length here on the pages of Mexican Coin Magic.

You can see there was a mish mash of rarity versus value scales used for Mexican coins by different authors then and now. However shortly after Buttrey introduced his system it became more or less the standard for Mexican coins and is still generally used today for most world coin pricing catalogs produced here in the US today.

This is a very comprehensive system when properly maintained, especially for new collectors, but it is almost worthless if it isn’t frequently updated. Enough said about a tender subject for now.

The Book’s Layout

Most of the early authors of Mexican coin catalogs spent little time, and not a lot of effort at giving collectors background information about each of the coins listed in their catalogs. Of course there are exceptions to this: the early works of Pradeau, Nesmith, Eklund and Noe, Guthrie and Bothamley to name a few, but I don’t consider these works to be coin catalogs. On the other hand one must assign “The Buttrey Guide Book” the title of a coin catalog.

For the first time we find a high quality professional looking photograph for one coin from each series, both front and back, mentioned in the book. Normally there are official mintage figures by DAM (Date/Assayer/Mintmark) where available. Each series, or denomination, is displayed in descending year order, and where there are mints and assayers they too are in a logical order. Buttrey starts with the copper coins, then proceeds to the silver and finally tackles the gold coins.

But what is unique to this catalog is the first 26 pages of the catalog where Professor Buttrey gives us a short history of the coins, a time line of important dates related to the decimal coins and much more. Even today there are facts and figures found herein that are generally overlooked by some collectors.

Last but not least is the size and price of this book. It is digest size (5¼ by 7½), well printed and the binding is so good that my well-worn copy isn’t even falling apart. I’ve been told the original cover price was less than $10, but I can’t verify this. While some may not consider this book essential to a good Mexican Numismatic Library, I personally believe you will still find it a worthwhile addition to any “great” library because it still must be considered to be an innovative and scholarly approach for any Mexican coin catalog even today.

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