Theodore V. Buttrey, Jr.

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Theodore Vern Buttrey Jr. (Ted) (born December 29, 1929 in Havre , Montana , † January 9, 2018 in Cambridge ) was an American classical philologist and numismatist .

Life

Buttrey was born to Theodore V. Buttrey, Sr. and Ruth Jeanette (Scoutt) Buttrey and the grandson of Frank A. Buttrey, founder of Buttrey Food and Drug , a chain of department stores in Montana and Texas. He received his education at the Peacock Military Academy in San Antonio , Texas and the Phillips Exeter Academy . From 1946 he studied Classical Studies at Princeton University (1950 BA , 1952 MA ). There he was also 1953 with the thesis "Studies in the Coinage of Mark Anthony" doctorate . He received a Fulbright Scholarship for research in Rome.

In 1954 he began his academic career at Yale University as an instructor in classics, in 1958 he became an assistant professor; in addition, since 1956 he was responsible for the university's numismatic collection. In 1964 he moved to the Classics Department of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor as an Associate Professor . He received a full professorship there in 1967. From 1969 to 1971 he was also director of the Kelsey Museum of Archeology at the University of Michigan. Buttrey was a Visiting Fellow and Resident Member of Clare Hall at Cambridge University . After his retirement in Michigan in late 1985, he moved to Cambridge, where he became an Affiliated Lecturer of the University's Faculty of Classics. He worked from 1988 to 1991 as curator of the coin collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum and since 2008 has held the position of honorary curator for ancient coins, which he also increased through donations from his personal collection. He is currently responsible for the library of numismatic auction catalogs , one of the largest in the world.

As a professor he taught and researched Greek literature.

Numismatic activity

Ancient numismatics

Buttrey spent many years actively processing the coin finds at various archaeological sites in the Mediterranean. In particular, he was involved in the documentation of the coin finds from Sardis in what is now Turkey and from Morgantina in what is now Sicily . He was involved in the publication of the coin finds from further excavations in Great Britain, Italy ( Cosa , Rome Palatine , Rome Forum ), Libya ( Apollonia , Cyrene , Euhesperides ) and Israel.

Coins from Mexico

As a child at the Peacock Military Academy in Texas, Buttrey first encountered coins from Mexico and began to be interested in them. Although as an adult his primary professional activities as a scholar were elsewhere, he retained an interest in Mexican coins. His Guidebook of Mexican Coins, 1822 to Date (1969), along with subsequent editions (up to the 6th edition in 1992, this one with Clyde Hubbard) is considered to be the fundamental work on this subject.

Counterfeit gold bars from Mexico and the American West

Buttrey is perhaps best known in the United States for discovering and disclosing a system for disseminating counterfeit gold bars from the American West, following an earlier work in which he was able to identify certain Mexican gold bars as counterfeit, primarily through cataloging anachronistic trial hallmark. This earlier work was surpassed in effect by Buttrey's 1973 lecture, False Mexican Colonial Gold Bars, at the International Numismatic Congress . In 1984, the American Numismatic Society passed a resolution supporting Buttrey's findings.

The dispute over the bars of the American West was possibly the only time in history that a dispute between numismatists made it to the pages of major newspapers, including the New York Times . Buttrey's findings about the authenticity of Western bars were first detailed in a lecture to the ANS in 1996. They were based in part on the mint and tasting marks, which he said were mismatched or inconsistent. He also noted that most of the bars in question had no provenance whatsoever, never appearing in catalogs or any other material from the time the bars were alleged to have been produced until the 1950s. Buttrey named coin dealer John J. Ford Jr. as the lawbreaker, who marketed many of his counterfeits through Stack's LLC, a renowned New York coin trading company. Ford and Stack's maintained that the bars in question were all genuine; Ford called Buttrey crazy ("crackpot").

It is undisputed that Ford and Stack's sold a number of these gold bars to collector and philanthropist Josiah K. Lilly, Jr. Lilly's extensive collection of gold and coins, including the controversial bars, was donated to the Smithsonian Institution after his death in 1966 in exchange for a large tax break on his estate. In 1999 Michael Hodder, an appraiser from Stack's, tried to refute the findings that Buttrey had made in his 1996 ANS lecture. That August, Buttrey and Hodder appeared together at a meeting of the American Numismatic Association in what numismatists refer to as The Great Debate . Following the debate, Ford, along with Stack's Harvey Stack, sued Buttrey for $ 5 million in defamation in the US Federal District Court in New York. However, that lawsuit was ultimately denied. Buttrey provided evidence of what he called fraud to the New York State Department of Justice, but no charges were ever brought against Ford or Stack's. Although parts of the Lilly collection are still on display at the National Museum of American History , the gold bars in question have been tacitly removed there.

Activities outside of numismatics

Buttrey worked with the University of Michigan Television Center from 1966 to 1980. He wrote and shot a. a. TV series about the Iliad (10 half-hour episodes) and the Odyssey (15 half-hour episodes), Herodotus , Suetonius and the twelve Caesars, and topics as diverse as racial relations and the art of drawing. These productions were taken over by over 75 TV stations at their peak. Buttrey was also the founder and publisher of Pevensey Press, a book publisher specializing in the publication of lavishly photographed illustrated books about English university cities and landscapes. The company employed a photographer and several authors. Over 20 titles were produced between 1980 and 1995.

Honors

Buttrey was awarded the Royal Numismatic Society Medal in 1983 and served as its President from 1989 to 1993. In 1996 he was awarded the Huntington Medal of the American Numismatic Society and in 2010 the Medal of the Norwegian Numismatic Society. In 2009 Buttrey was made an honorary member of the International Numismatic Council . He is a corresponding member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences . In 2011 the Institute for Numismatics and Monetary History at the University of Vienna awarded him the Wolfgang Hahn Medal.

Publications (selection)

  • The Triumviral Portrait Gold of the Quattuorviri Monetales of 42 BC (= Numismatic Notes and Monographs. 137, ISSN  0078-2718 ). American Numismatic Society, New York NY 1956, JSTOR i40144087 .
  • A Guide Book of Mexican Coins. 1822 to date. Western Publishing Company, Racine WI 1969, (6th edition with Clyde Hubbard. Krause Publications, Iola WI 1992, ISBN 0-87341-193-5 ).
  • as editor: Coinage of the Americas. American Numismatic Society, New York NY 1973.
  • Cosa. The Coins (= Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome. 34). American Academy in Rome, Rome 1980, ISBN 88-7006-017-9 .
  • Documentary Evidence for the Chronology of the Flavian Titulature (= Contributions to Classical Philology. 112.) Hain, Meisenheim am Glan 1980, ISBN 3-445-02115-5 .
  • with Ann Johnston, Kenneth M. Mackenzie, Michael L. Bates: Greek, Roman, and Islamic Coins from Sardis (= Archaeological Exploration of Sardis. Monographs. 7). Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA et al. 1982, ISBN 0-674-36305-1 .
  • with Kenan T. Erim , Thomas D. Croves, R. Ross Holloway: The Coins (= Morgantina Studies. Vol. 2). Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1989, ISBN 0-691-04013-3 .
  • with Ian A. Carradice : From AD 69–96. Vespasian to Domitian (= The Roman Imperial Coinage . Volume 2, Part 1). 2., fully revised edition. Spink, London 2007, ISBN 978-1-902040-84-4 .

Remarks

  1. ^ Sarah E. Cox: In Memoriam: Theodore V. Buttrey, Jr. Society for Classical Studies, January 22, 2018, accessed January 23, 2018 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Dinitia Smith: Gold Bars, Glamorous Stories And a Battle Over Authenticity. In: New York Times , March 3, 2001.
  3. ^ List of publications by Pevensey Press ( Memento of June 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive ).
  4. ^ List of winners of the Royal Numismatic Society medal .
  5. ^ List of former presidents of the Royal Numismatic Society .
  6. ↑ List of Huntington Medal recipients .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Buttrey, Theodore V. Jr.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Buttrey, Theodore Vern Jr. (full name); Buttrey, Theodore V .; Buttrey, Ted (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American classical philologist and numismatist
DATE OF BIRTH December 29, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Havre , Montana
DATE OF DEATH January 9, 2018