The Royal Philatelic Society London (RPSL) is the oldest philatelic society in the world. It was founded on 10 April 1869 as The Philatelic Society, London. The society runs a postal museum, the Spear Museum of Philatelic History, at its headquarters in the City of London.
Evelyn Arthur Smythies, CIE, was a distinguished forester and philatelist, born of British parents in India. Smythies was an expert on the ecology of Uttarakhand and Nepal. His careful studies of the earliest postage stamps of India, Jammu and Kashmir, Nepal, and Canada produced groundbreaking handbooks on which philatelists rely, even today.
Sir Percival Victor David Ezekiel David, 2nd Baronet was a British-Indian financier who is best known as a scholar and collector of Chinese ceramics. He also formed a collection of Chinese stamps and postal history that has been evaluated as one of the greatest ever assembled.
James Richard William Purves – generally denoted in publications as J. R. W. Purves -- was an Australian lawyer and philatelist. His half century of work in Australian philately earned him the title "The personification of Australia in International Philately".
The Roll of Distinguished Philatelists (RDP) is a philatelic award of international scale, created by the Philatelic Congress of Great Britain in 1921. The Roll consists of five pieces of parchment to which the signatories add their names.
The Revenue Society was formed in 1990 and is the only international philatelic society which covers revenue stamps of the whole world. The society is also noted for the particularly high quality of its journal which has published many articles on subjects about which little or nothing has previously been written.
Marcus Francis Javier Samuel was a distinguished British philatelist who was an expert on the specimen stamps and revenue stamps of Britain and the British Commonwealth. He was a Fellow of the Royal Philatelic Society London.
Radford Henry (Harry) Dagnall MA, AKC, FRPSL, was a British philatelist and Fellow of The Royal Philatelic Society London who made a lifetime's study of some of the by-ways of philately with a special interest in revenue philately.
Dieter Bortfeldt FRPSL was a graphic designer and award-winning philatelist who was a specialist in the philately of Colombia. He designed the "Famous Colombians" and "Tourism" postage stamps of Colombia issued in 1993.
Hedwige Alma Lee FRPSL RDP was a Swiss-born naturalised British philatelist who specialised in the stamps of Switzerland and in topical collecting. She won large gold medals for her displays at Naba 1984, Stockholmia 1986, Hafnia 1987 and Finlandia 1988 and her collection was exhibited in the Court of Honour at PhilexFrance 1989 and New Zealand 1990. She signed the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists in 1991 and later became the only non-resident member of the Consilium Philateliae Helveticae. The Royal Philatelic Society London award the Lee Medal in memory of Alma and her husband Ron.
Lawrence Arthur Burd FRHistS FRPSL was a British public school schoolmaster, expert on the works of Niccolò Machiavelli, and also notable as a philatelist.
Major Ronald Norman Spafford, known as Ronnie Spafford, was a British army officer and philatelist who was an expert in the stamps and postal history of the Falkland Islands and developed a deep interest in those islands.
Paul Ramsay is a United States-based British-born philanthropist and computer tycoon.
Simon John Sacher, CBE was a British retailer who spent thirty years with Marks & Spencer, including 25 years as a director. He was the last descendant of the co-founder of the company, Michael Marks, to serve in an executive capacity on the board of the firm. He was a former president of the Royal Philatelic Society London, member of the Council of the Royal College of Music, a governor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, one of its vice-presidents, and vice-president of the Industry and Parliament Trust. He was chairman of the Westminster Forum, and founder of the Whitehall and Industry Group.
David Riley Pitts is an American healthcare administrator, chief executive, and philatelist.
Walter Neville Watterson was an English civil engineer and philatelist who was a specialist in the stamps and postal history of Sarawak, Borneo, and Brunei. He wrote a two volume history of the mails of the Japanese prisoner of war camps of Borneo during the Second World War.
Ezekiel Victor Toeg FRPSL was a British solicitor and philatelist who specialised in the postage stamps and postal history of the British West Indies (BWI) and Caribbean. His collection of Antigua won two gold medals at international stamp exhibitions and included a 1693 letter to London that was described in 1990 as the earliest known letter from the island. He wrote a book on the adhesive fees stamps of the Leeward Islands (1991) and completed a survey of the stamps and postal history of the island of Dominica to 1935 (1994). He was president of the British West Indies Study Circle (BWISC) from 1968 until his death in 2010.
Adolf Passer FRPSL was an Austrian philatelist and authority on the stamps of Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Ottoman Empire and Turkey.
Arthur Linz FAIC, FRPSL, was an American industrial chemist who specialized in the chemistry of molybdenum and its compounds. He was also a noted philatelist who formed leading collections of the stamps and postal history of Finland, Peru, and Turkey, and wrote extensively about his collecting interests. He formed the majority of the Bernard Payton collection of Peruvian stamps and postal history in the Smithsonian National Postal Museum and his collection of Turkish stamps included a block of tête-bêche "tughra" stamps of the Ottoman Empire that has been described as "arguably the most important Tughra item".
