Born at Havre, Montana. Graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University in 1950. Received Ph.D. from Princeton in 1953. Married three times with four children from the first marriage.

Employed as a teacher at University of Michigan in 1964 and promoted to full professor in 1967.

Keeper of Coin and Medals at the Fitzwilliam Museum 1988 to 1991 and Honorary Keeper of Ancient Coins from 2008 until his death.

Author of Guidebook of Mexican Coins (1969). In 1973 he spoke of “False Mexican Colonial Gold Bars” at the International Numismatic Congress.

Buttrey debated Michael Hodder during the American Numismatic Association convention in Chicago in August of 1999. Buttrey claimed that gold assay bars sold by Paul Franklin through John J. Ford were modern fabrications. Ford and Stack’s sued Buttrey but the suit was dropped.

He died at Cambridge, England.