Green’s Dictionary of Slang

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

1956		in Congressional Quarterly Wkly Report n.d. 774: ‘Today, even five thousand dollars seems like chump change‘.
1968		‘Sl. of Watts’ in Current Sl. III:2.
1972		Milner & Milner Black Players 17: You could be makin’ plenty money ’steada shakin’ yo’ ass for chump change.
1984		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.
1990		(con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 14: Bud searched him: Dinardo Sanchez ID, chump change.
1994		N. McCall Makes Me Wanna Holler (1995) 152: They couldn’t scrape up the chump change.
2000		P. Beatty Tuff 172: Don’t let that little chump change in your pocket fill your head, nigger!
2004		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.
2011		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.
2017		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.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 27: An actor living off chump change and ageing queens.

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

1983		N. Heard House of Slammers 212: They were the chumps, the doofuses, who only got chump change in life.
1996		(con. mid-1960s) J. Lardner Crusader 331: [T]he prisoner will laugh at the cop. ‘You’re chump change, Jack,’ he’ll say.