JPL Coin Program

On page 5 of the January 21 issue of Coin World there is an article about legislation that has been passed in 2007 by the 110th Congress. Below it is a table of coinage legislation that had been introduced in 2007 and its current status. Scanning it I saw the Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) commemorative coins. This was first reported last year in Coin World (the exact issue I cannot remember) but here is an overview of the program and then I will comment upon it:

There would be nine coins for each of the planets. They would be struck in proof silver only and on the obverse would be a depiction of the planet and on the reverse would be a design relating to one of the US missions to said planet. A tenth coin for the sun would be struck in extremely high relief gold. The same design requirements as the planets would also be used here.

Here is a copy of the bill: H.R. 2500

My reaction:

I've always been enamored with space travel and I think that JPL coins would be inherently cool I am concerned by the size of the program. 10 coins would discourage a lot of people from buying (myself included) since the cost of it would be enormous. With gold around $900 an ounce and the sun coin weighing that much, the whole program could cost ~$1400 (estimating a conservative $1000 price tag on the Sun plus $40 dollars a pop for each planet) to buy and with an offbeat subject (not many people care about space exploration), I think it would suffer from poor sales. The only bright side is that bronze duplicates of the sun coin would be available for purchase. However, that would still be a cost of about $400 just for the silver coins. Also, lets remember that the Sun and planets are big spheres. The gas giants are recognizable because of color differences, how do you differentiate between Neptune and Jupiter on a coin with no color? Since this bill hasn't even reached debate and it the coins are to be minted before the end of 2008 it is likely that this bill will die. I won't miss it but it is an opportunity wasted to bring a smaller JPL coin program to the market.