Return of the Half Dime?

A member of congress recently introduced a new bill that would replace the nickel with a new half-dime. While this is unlikely to see the light of day (this year at least), it is still of interest to those of us interested in changing US coinage.

But what does this have to do with dollar coins? It turns out that the half dime is a brother of the dollar coin, being one of the original US coin denominations. Also, like the new dollar coin, the new half-dime would reduce minting costs, due to less material being required. The suggested size of the new half-dime would be smaller than the current dime.

Would the adoption of a half dime be easier than that of the new dollar coins? Hard to say. From a heavy-pants perspective, half dimes would be much lighter than nickels, the bruisers of the coin world. A half-dime smaller than a dime would allow the diameter-to-value mapping to work better; silver coins' size would be representative of their value. This also means there is a chance that the new coin might be confused for another. Vending machines would need to change too.