Amazing when you think of how much it cost to send those seeds to the moon how they didn't keep records of where they planted them back on earth. Are these the most unique trees on the planet?
The seeds never actually made it to the surface of the Moon. They stayed with Roosa, orbiting the Moon 34 times in a metal cylinder. So technically they are more space trees than Moon trees.
I don't think so. How much would a private sample-return mission cost (I assume you mean unmanned)? A billion at least?
You'd need a million seeds sold at $1000 each, or a thousand seeds sold at a million. I don't think you can command that kind of price at that level of supply either way.
I wouldn't think a seeds-gimmick alone could raise all the funds, but it might raise a lot. A grove of trees (or other plants) grown from seeds that have been farther from Earth than any other native organism [1] would have serious tourist-attraction value, even if replicated in many places.
Wikipedia reports the ESA's 'Mars Express' as having a total budget excluding lander of about $185 million. So perhaps a bare-bones orbit-and-return could be done, unmanned and on a leisurely pace, for $300 million.
Sell 5,000 seeds at $30,000/each to raise half the mission cost? Not totally inconceivable.
[1] disregarding stowaway microrganisms on non-returning probes
