is this coin about the same size as a half dollar? could it pass for a half dollar in someone's hand if they didnt see what it looked like?

It has a hole in it...

If the spectators do not handle the chinese coin in the beginning of the routine and if you don't draw too much attention to the hole, it might just fly by them that it has a hole in it and might not ever really occur to them that they are holding a different coin. If you are doing a transpo trick, the attention is on your hands and they won't even realize they have a coin.

If you placed the coin so that the hole is at the middle point of the hand between the palm and fingers, they will close their hands around the coin so that their fingers don't really even touch the hole.

So no, I don't think they will realize that. In HOLY MOLY, they never notice anything.

curtis puts a west african penny (which has a hole in it) into the spectators hand on his rountine tripple alliance without a problem. There is very little chance they will ever feel the hole.

ok, well i am going to use it for a coins accross routine (the one from ITBTWC/Noblezada) where a half dollar turns into the chinese coin in their hand. do you guys think that will fly as well as it does in the performance on that DVD? assuming you have seen it.