As a versatile researcher, he also contributed to early Philippine studies on anthropology, ethnology, archaeology, linguistics and demographics. Collections Epifanio de los Santos traveled to many places in Europe, Asia, and Americas searching for rare Philippine documents in museums, archives, and libraries. He collected almost 200 paintings and sculpted pieces done by Juan Luna, Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, Fabián de la Rosa, Juan Arellano, Pablo Amorsolo, Fernando Amorsolo, Graciano Nepomuceno and Guillermo Tolentino, musical literatures, opera records, valuable printed materials, documents and manuscripts on the revolution and historical pictures. According to Zaide, his famous Filipiniana collection was rated by foreign scholars as the best in the world. In Europe, he was recognized as the philologist and writer of biographical matters about the Philippines. According to Zaide, there are documents and printed matter in his collection that cannot be found elsewhere, not even in the Filipiniana Division of The National Library nor in any library the world over, the Library of Congress of the United States included. The best years of his life were spent in looking for them only to find them after an almost "wild goose chase" of a lifetime. His Rizaliana collections were greatly acknowledged by W. E. Retana, James A. Le-Roy, and Austin Craig. In all, there are 115 printed matter and 213 documents in the collection dealing with Philippine revolution After de los Santos's death, the Philippine legislature, by virtue of the Philippine Clarin Act, negotiated with the widow and heirs of the great collector for the purchase of the collection and library. The Philippine government bought the priceless collections for P 19,250.00. Other interests Aside from his scholarly works on different facets of the Philippines, he was also known to be one of the best guitarists at that time. According to Teodoro Agoncillo, there were at least two guitarists that could contend with him, and these were Fernando Canon and General Antonio Luna. For him, music is the embodiment of happiness of the soul, the one that could refreshen the withered spirit. There was even a story that de los Santos and his friend, Clemente Jose Zulueta had a bitter face-off in the office of La Independencia and Antonio Luna offered to pacify the two gentlemen and he offer his guitar to the one who would win the argumentation, and de los Santos won so he received Luna's guitar. Public service Epifanio de los Santos was