Green’s Dictionary of Slang

chump change n.

[chump n. + SE change]
(US black)

1. small change, esp. a sum of money that is too small to buy anything worthwhile.

in Congressional Quarterly Wkly Report n.d. 774: ‘Today, even five thousand dollars seems like chump change‘.
[US] ‘Sl. of Watts’ in Current Sl. III:2.
[US]Milner & Milner Black Players 17: You could be makin’ plenty money ’steada shakin’ yo’ ass for chump change.
[US]Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mell ‘Beat Street’ 🎵 After this they’ll be no more bad times, no more hard times no more pain, no more chump change none of that bull.
[US](con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 14: Bud searched him: Dinardo Sanchez ID, chump change.
[US]N. McCall Makes Me Wanna Holler (1995) 152: They couldn’t scrape up the chump change.
[US]P. Beatty Tuff 172: Don’t let that little chump change in your pocket fill your head, nigger!
news.zdnet.com 20 Aug. 🌐 AT&T’s Net phone service may ultimately generate less than $2 billion a year [...] which is chump change to a corporate giant.
[UK]J.J. Connolly Viva La Madness 38: Your fifteen mill in dollars [is] chump-change to some of the outfits who do their laundry round here.
[US]T. Pluck ‘Deadbeat’ in Life During Wartime (2018) 27: [I]f he so much as spits at my feet he’ll be working shit shifts for chump change for a year.
[US]J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 27: An actor living off chump change and ageing queens.

2. in fig. use, anything or anyone insignificant.

[US]N. Heard House of Slammers 212: They were the chumps, the doofuses, who only got chump change in life.
[US](con. mid-1960s) J. Lardner Crusader 331: [T]he prisoner will laugh at the cop. ‘You’re chump change, Jack,’ he’ll say.