Lars Engelbrecht was born in 1968 and has been collecting stamps since he was a child. Since 1983, the bi-coloured postal stationery has been his primary collecting area, and over the years, his postal stationery collecting has developed into philatelic exhibiting in competitions at national and international level. Lars’ exhibit on the bi-coloured postal stationery has been awarded 97 points, has won large gold medals at several international exhibitions, and won the 2011 Danish championship and in 2017 the Nordic championship.
Lars became a philatelic juror in 2003 and has been both secretary and chairman of the Danish Philatelic Jurors’ Board. He is an accredited FIP juror in the postal stationery, postal history and literature classes and also FIP team leader in both postal stationery and postal history and has worked as a juror and team leader at Danish, Nordic and international exhibitions – among others: Great Britain (2010), Indonesia (2012), Taiwan (2013), Brazil (2013), Sweden (2014), USA (2016), Finland (2016), Germany (2017), Brazil (2017), Greece (2021) and Czech Republic (2022). He has also been a jury secretary at the exhibitions Finlandia 2017, Praga 2018, London 2022, Hunfilex 2022 and IBRA 2023 as well as jury chairman at Nordia 2015 and Stockholmia 2019. In addition, Lars was the initiator and designer of – and has been a trainer at – FIP’s academy for accredited FIP judges from around the world, as well as former secretary and chairman of FIP’s postal stationery commission, where he has been Denmark’s representative since 2008.
In the period 2002 to 2005, Lars together with Erik Hvidberg Hansen† wrote a series of 29 articles in DFT (Dansk Filatelistisk Tidsskrift) about collecting postal stationery. Lars has also written many articles in domestic and foreign magazines about postal stationery and exhibiting, he wrote the booklet “Optimizing Your Postal Stationery Exhibit” in 2013 and was the editor of the FIP postal stationery commission’s newsletter for 10 years.
Lars is also an avid lecturer and has given more than 100 presentations in Denmark and abroad, and in 2015 he received the Lee Medal from The Royal Philatelic Society of London for the best presentation of the year.
Lars is since 2021 a Board Director of the FEPA (Federation of European Philatelic Associations) and is also General Commissioner for HAFNIA 2024 – a European FEPA stamp exhibition in Copenhagen.
In 2016, Lars, as one of only seven Danes ever, was invited to sign the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists, which is described as the most prestigious honor in philately, and today Lars sits as the first Dane ever in the Board of Election to the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists (the committee that nominates new signatories to “The Roll”, who can then use the suffix RDP).