The colored Jones polynomial is a function $J_K:{\mathbb{N}}\longrightarrow{\mathbb{Z}}[t,t^{-1}]$ associated with a knot $K$ in 3-space. We will show that for an alternating knot $K$ the absolute values of the first and the last three leading coefficients of $J_K(n)$ are independent of $n$ when $n$ is sufficiently large. Computation of sample knots indicates that this should be true for any fixed leading coefficient of the colored Jones polynomial for alternating knots. As a corollary we get a volume-ish theorem for the colored Jones polynomial.