Leopoldo R. Aguinaldo
(Philippine Journal of Philately, Nov-Dec
1948)
Leopoldo R. Aguinaldo, one of our leading Filipino businessmen, has two
absorbing interests, his business and his stamp collection, and it
is interesting to note that the latter dates far ahead of his
business career.
Fascinated by stamps as a boy, he didn't have much opportunity to get hold
of stamps as they were quite restricted in his youth during the
Spanish regime. Early in boyhood he cherished fond thoughts of
foreign countries because he read much about them and was told much
about strange places by the parish priest of Santa Cruz Church whom
he befriended, (he being then a sexton of the church) and subsequently by American
soldiers upon their coming to whom he peddled the CABLE NEWS
AMERICAN, a daily newspaper, and this increased the fascination of
foreign stamps to him.
In his school days in Japan where he took up a Textile Engineering course,
he had opportunities to increase his stamp collection.
Back to Manila and after
resigning from the Bureau of Education as a teacher in the Mountain
Province, he started engaging in trade. It was at this time that he
had ample opportunities of accumulating stamps and adding more and
more to his collection. Most of the merchandise handled were imports
and they arrived by parcel post. Although
for one reason or another, many a time the parcels were delivered
with the stamps off, he didn't worry as they were merely duplicates
of the hundreds and hundreds that have been accumulated.
Beginning 1925 and until the outbreak of the war, Mr. Aguinaldo had made
trips around the world four times visiting almost all of Europe, the
near and middle east - Java, Sumatra, Siam, Ceylon, India, Malaya
and other oriental countries as well as the Americas. Apart from
this he made four trips to the United States, thus making him one of
the most extensively traveled Filipinos. Foreign travel was, of
course, conducive to his stamp collection.
Included in Mr. Aguinaldo's vast collection and accumulation are large
numbers of commemorative covers and special issues. For the past two
and a half years he has been abroad where he spends the warm months
mostly in New York where the L. R. Aguinaldo Company has a big
office, and the cold months south of the equator - in Brazil,
Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Peru. He corresponds regularly with
stamp dealers all over the world and sells part of his collection
while acquiring those for which he has a special liking. He has
probably the largest and most
complete collection of the Loriga-Gallarza series, the von Gronau
series, the first Clipper series.
He says that his collection will go to his grandchildren, of which he has
seven (four girls and three
boys) when they are grown, to know the value of stamp collection
and to inherit love of the hobby. The value of his stamp collection,
as it is, he conservatively values at upwards of fifty thousand
pesos.
Mr. Aguinaldo gladly tells that the hobby of stamp collecting and his
business career are two interlacing fascinations of his life.
