A Wonderful Adventure
“It’s a wonderful adventure,” says Chilean specialist Carlos Vergara of his philatelic hobby. “You develop a relationship with little pieces of paper that tell a powerful story.”
The child of missionaries—his mother American and his father Chilean—Carlos Vergara attended public schools in Santiago, Chile, through sixth grade, when the family returned to the United States. He credits his mother with kindling his philatelic interests. When, as a young adult, he ventured into a stamp show, he rediscovered that childhood interest and gravitated naturally to the stamps of his birth country, Chile. “I collect what interests me, not necessarily the classics,” he stresses. Vergara’s exhibits of Chilean Officials, stamps used by government departments on official correspondence, receive honors nationally. His hobby has reconnected him with his homeland. He travels frequently to Chile, where he enjoys friendships with many of Chile’s prestigious collectors and documents their philatelic lives through photography.
Favorite: Mail from Poet Pablo Neruda to President Salvador Allende, Chile, 1973
