Arthur D. Royster (AD) is a member of a distinguished North Carolina family that has been in the United States since the eighteenth century. He joined the military when he was eighteen, attended classes at the Command and General Staff School in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas and was posted in Germany for over ten years.   Mr. Royster was initially stationed in Bonn, attached to the U.S. Embassy there and later was posted to the American Zone of Berlin.

Mr. Royster is fluent in German and has been a militaria collector since 1960.  In that time,  he has amassed a large collection of items of German militaria, both Third Reich and Imperial, as well as a smaller collection of Imperial French and Russian historical artifacts.  Among the more important historical artifacts in Mr. Royster’s collection are Hitler’s will, the baton of a German field marshal, a set of decorations belonging to Hermann Goering and two sets of the rare Oakleaves and Diamonds to the German Second World War Knight’s Cross.

After decades of researching and collecting militaria items, Mr. Royster has been struck by a lack of original knowledge anywhere on the Internet. Of course, there have been many very good, accurate and informative books published on military subjects but somehow, little of this accurate and helpful information has made it to the great information highway.

As he grown older, Mr. Royster is consulting his own collection and many wartime German records in order to present as accurate a picture as possible to assist serious collectors and hopefully, to save them from making serious errors based on lack of knowledge.

Mr. Royster’s wife of forty years, Madeline Palmquist Royster, died in 2008 and they had two sons, James and Arthur, Jr. and a daughter Bettina who is married to a Belgian diplomat. Mr. Royster lives on Bear Gulch Road in Woodside, an exclusive community south of San Francisco, California.

Reader comments are indeed always welcome and, if time permits, Mr. Royster will be pleased to answer queries from interested parties.
For more information, Please email us at

AD@ADRoysterMilitaria.com