Green’s Dictionary of Slang

virtually worthless, insignificant, paltry.

1809		Southey in Robberds Memoir W. Taylor (1843) II 268: I am really sorry that [he] should be for ever committingSome little dirty twopenny-halfpenny piece of roguery .
1838		Dickens Oliver Twist (1867) 190: Dodger — going abroad for a common twopenny-halfpenny sneeze-box! I never thought he’d ha’ done it under a gold watch, chain, and seals at the lowest.
1845		T.M. Hughes Revelations of Spain 304: This twopenny-halfpenny marvel became wheezy on the second day and expired on the third.
1858		R.S. Surtees Ask Mamma 233: I wouldn’t keep an agent who bothered me with all the twopenny-halfpenny transactions of the estate – dom’d if I would.
1865		H. Kingsley Hillyars and Burtons (1870) 421: Some two-penny-half-penny clerk, who gets himself up like a fancy stock-rider.
1876		Hansard (UK) CCVIII 673: My Honorable Friend the Member for Hull asked if such a twopenny-halfpenny society as Lloyd’s was to be acknowledged.
1887		Contemp. Mag. LII 132: The narrowing of the horizon of aspiration which this perpetual dealing with twopenny-halfpenny gains involves.
1890		Sporting Times 18 Jan. 1: Portugal is, of course, a little twopenny-halfpenny fool of a place.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 90: Twopenny-Halfpenny, a contemptible, mean, or insignificant fellow.
1899		J. Conrad ‘The Heart of Darkness’ in Blackwood’s Mag. Feb. 202/2: Good heavens! and I was going to take charge of a two-penny-halfpenny river steamboat with a penny whistle attached!
1901		B. Pain De Omnibus 18: If some twop’ny-’ipeny gal likes ter wear all the money she can borrer, it ain’t nutthink ter me.
1919		W.S. Maugham Moon and Sixpence 183: He’s got some twopenny-halfpenny job in the medical at Alexandria – sanitary officer or something like that.
1930		J.S. Fletcher Both of This Parish 99: Twopenny-halfpenny grocer’s lad? What will your bullying sea captain say to that, I wonder?
1946		S. Jackson Indiscreet Guide to Soho 78: How food and service like this can be provided at a price charged by any twopenny-halfpenny restaurant in Soho is [...] a mystery.
1959		A. Sinclair Breaking of Bumbo (1961) 66: How do you think we’d run the ruddy Brigade if every twopenny-ha’penny Ensign thought he could do as he liked.
1961		T. Murphy Whistle in the Dark Act I: I don’t want people, twopence-half-penny guys, ordering a son of mine.
1999		J. Poller Reach 57: His father [...] was a sot; his mother, by all accounts, a twopenny-halfpenny whore.