Should we bring back half dimes?

It's been known for a few years now that a nickel costs more than 5 cents to make, but.... what is the government doing about it? I'd like to hear your thoughts on whether or not we should bring back the half dime, and keep it branded as the nickel.

This would make a nickel cost less than a penny to make.

 

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If you were to reduce the size it would be easily confused with a dime. Also all of the vending machines that already accept nickels would need to be changed. Sounds very expensive, what would be the benefit?

 

That may actually be a downfall. I believe, though, that if the government is saying that it costs more than 5 cents to make a nickel, the first step is to take the nickel out of it. In all honesty, the nickel is worth as much, if not more, than the copper. Possibly zinc for the other 25%?

 

Just did a little bit of research, it costs the government 10.4 cents to make one nickel. That's not a very good trade off. A possible solution could be to stop producing them for circulation and to just make them as collector pieces, like what they did with the half dollar. Just a thought.

 

Even if you keep the same diameter and thickness, the weight would change making machines that accept them, reject them.

Bigger than a vending machine issue. Think "CoinStar," Toll Booths, Nickel Slots in the really small casinos . . .

Z

 

That sounds quite cool! However, there is one metal that the government has never bothered experiencing with, and that is titanium. A nickel with titanium could have a small weight, an excessively durable planchet, and it could even be cost effective.


I believe that the Mint has thought about turning to aluminum, but that would be catastrophic as most aluminum world coins don't last long.

 

No. People can't count as it is, now, so no reason to add to the confusion while waiting 27 minutes and 14 seconds and a clerk-manager conference to conclude how much the cost should be and the amount of change.

Truth in editing: changed "q" to "a".

 

I hope to God this is not a true story. LOL

I do agree that people can't count nowadays. My dad once paid for an item with a $100 and this cashier gave him change for a 50.

 

For good reason, I think. It would be much harder to strike, given its relative hardness and brittleness.

BTW, welcome to CoinTalk!

 

Thanks for the welcoming! I agree that titanium could be hard to strike as well. If you look up "titanium eagle" on eBay, the titanium eagles almost always have a weak strike. However, I really like them.

 

Get the right lobbyists behind it, and that won't matter. Just look at the amazing self-destructing zinc cents.

The people forcing decisions on coin composition don't care how long the coins last. I just hope they don't get the bright idea to strike coins from sodium -- it IS the cheapest metal in the world by volume...

 

And to get back to your original question, "what is the government doing about [the excessive cost of making nickels]"...

I think the direct answer is "they're doing NOTHING about it, because nobody's pushing them in a particular direction". You've discussed some possible solutions. If the nickel's composition is going to change, I imagine it would change to iron with some sort of plating. That would break all the vending machines and self-checkouts, but so would nearly any other change that significantly reduced the coin's manufacturing cost. (I don't think there's any material that has the same density and EM signature as cupronickel, but is significantly cheaper.)

But the answer should be "doing away with every denomination smaller than the quarter, and looking really hard at the quarter". Remember, we did away with the half-cent because it was too small a value for people to bother with -- and its purchasing power at the time was something like seventeen cents in today's money. We're all still pretending that if you "watch the pennies" "the dollars will take care of themselves", but in fact watching pennies is a useless distraction at this point. (Except, of course, for those enlightened enough to look past their face value... )

 

Just don't get it wet . . . .

Gizmo

 

Hey, we could go on Niven's Roentgen Standard, and then your coins would dry themselves off -- in fact, they'd do so MORE quickly if you just dumped them in a pile!

 

And to think that it actually took Great Britain until 1984 to learn that lesson. If you actually spent a farthing over there in 1970 at a place that took new pence, you'd have a whopping 1/9.6 of a penny. What's worse is that they also had a quarter farthing!

 

FWIW - if anything - the copper in a nickel is worth more than the nickel content: https://www.coinflation.com/coins/1946-2007-Jefferson-Nickel-Value.html

 

If the government did things that make sense we’d all be nuts just thinking about it.

 

Really? I thought that the copper in it was worth just under 4 cents. It likely did hit more than a nickel to make when copper hit $5.02 a pound.

I should've been jack slapped for not saving copper pennies before that.

 

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No. It would not.

 

Why would we bring back the half dime? It was too small to be practical when it was issued from 1795 to 1873.

A cent is worth nothing. A half dime is 5 times nothing, which is still nothing. Inflation has made these coins useless for commerce.