Last week, it was reported by Michele Orzano at Coinworld that a lunar surface flown $20 bill sold via private treaty sale for "well into the six figures" -- an amazing amount, but testament to the inherent value of these rare items. Michele wrote a further follow up article on this particular bills provenance. A good read, and it makes one wonder what the entire Jefferson collection would be worth on the secondary market, given the price paid for this singular bill.

This large note US $2 bill flew on the last flight of the Mercury space program in the space suit pocket of astronaut Gordon Cooper. This bill, along with all of the Jefferson Space Museum bills, has been officially slabbed and certified by PMG. Note the hand written flight certification and autograph on the bill by astronaut Cooper.

On the back of each bill's label in the PMG slab, the bill's flight status is referenced.

The Jefferson Space Museum is pleased to announce that all of the space flown bills in the collection have been officially certified and slabbed by Paper Money Guaranty, one of the leading paper money authentication and grading services. We took the bills to the PMG offices in Sarasota back in November. We presented PMG with the originals (and copies for their files, as we retain the originals) of all of the background paper work on each bill -- their history, their flight provenance, and all relevant documentation. Copies of this official documentation will always reside with PMG. We took this step of further authenticating these bills for their appeal to the numismatic community, after PMG's sister company NGC certified Buzz Aldrin's lunar surface flown Peach Dollar from Apollo 11. NGC also slabs, grades and certifies space flown Robbins and Flightline medallions, making it a natural for us to select PMG for the space flown $2 bills from our collection.

This bill is one of only a small number of $2 bills to have flown with John Glenn on his historic space flight. This bill was placed aboard the capsule by ground support crew member Joe Tramel.

50 years ago today, John Glenn rocketed into orbit on Friendship 7-- making him the first American to orbit the Earth as the US began to catch up to the Russians in the great space race. The Jefferson Space Museum is proud to have a $2 bill that flew along with John on that historic flight. The bill is pictured above, and you can read more about it in the Gallery Section of the museum website, or here on the blog by clicking here.

JP Aerospace will send your logo to the edge of space for as low as $400.

A Japanese TV program took advantage of the program to send a chair into space and video taped it for an episode!

And Samsung sent their Galaxy phone into near orbit. Very cool!

The Jefferson Space Museum to go to the edge of space, thanks to the good folks at JP Aerospace. For a small fee, they will send your logo to the edge of space, and send you back pictures. For a few dollars more, you can send up practically anything (heck, look on their website -- someone sent up a chair! And Samsung sent up a phone!) Very cool. Astronaut Tom will very soon be a real astro! (Well, almost...) It also supports a good cause, in that each sponsored ad supports student experiements that fly up on the mission. 4 missions are slated to launch come March 31st. The Jefferson Space Museum will be along for the ride: we've booked our spot. How about you?

Just added the above wonderful piece to our growing space-art collection. This is a painting by an emerging NJ artist named John Darvie, who paints under the name Apollo1. You can visit his gallery, Apollo1Gallery to see his amazing work. This painting is an acrylic/oil work, measuring 14" x 18". It pays homage to the crew of Apollo 1 (Grissom, White, Chaffee) who perished in the Apollo 1 fire in 1967. It's a wonderful addition to our space art collection, and I encourage all to go to John's site, and support his work.