5 Dollars Telescope - Hans Lippershey

Palau's science-themed commemorative series of the late 2000s positioned the microstate — which operates no independent monetary policy to speak of — as a prolific issuer of collector silver. This piece honors Hans Lippershey, the Dutch-German spectacle maker who filed the first patent application for a refracting telescope in 1608, though his claim was disputed almost immediately by Jacob Metius and Zacharias Janssen. The patent was ultimately denied on the grounds that the device was too easy to replicate.