DON FELIPE R. HIDALGO
By Aquilino de los Triños
(Philippine Journal of Philately, Jan-Feb 1949)
Don Felipe R. Hidalgo, nephew of the Filipino painter Felix
Resurreccion Hidalgo y Padilla, is a leading Filipino collector,
owner of a vast treasure worth
a million-peso in souvenirs, armors, coins, medals, furniture, virtu,
old paintings, different stamps throughout the world and all
multifarious collections that can be called a treasure, from a tiny
pincushion in the figure of Hitler to a life-size bronze tiger.
He began collecting at the tender age of six, and still collecting
now and acquiring rarer collections for his treasures. He will be 64
on January 20, 1949 and still looking in his prime of life. He
belongs to a long line of the wealthy Hidalgo families in Manila.
He attended his grammar school at the Ateneo de Manila with
Bishop Cesar Guerrero, Judge Jorge Revilla and Engineer Zaragoza as
his classmates, and continued his law course at the old Liceo de
Manila.
Although Chapter XIII of the American Air Mail Society, popularly
known as the Philippine Air Mail Society, has not yet been
reorganized since the armistice, he is still the president. He
collects thousands upon thousands of different stamps investing a
considerable portion of his money on this collection. He specializes
on first day covers and air mails; stamps with errors also fascinate
him. He says he did not invest his money in business nor buy real
estate but invested it in collections. Asked whether his collection
is for speculation, he emphatically replied that treasure-collection
gives him an aesthetic bliss usually found among lovers of arts, and
that is all he desires.
He agrees that however determined a philatelist to invest his money
on stamps, he cannot possibly have a complete collection of a
certain country. Emphasizing the rare one-cent British Guiana stamp
as his example, he says that this stamp is so rare that only a few
got hold of this stamp, and that one stamp missing from his
collection means incompleteness of the collection for that
particular country.
He has no definite plans for the future in case he succumbs to the
inevitable, however, he says he will give his treasure-collection to
whomever among his children will be interested to keep it.
