sixpenny, adj. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

sixpenny adj.

second-rate, cheap, worthless.

c.1597		Shakespeare Henry IV Pt 1 II i: I am joined with no foot-land-rakers, no long-staff sixpenny strikers, none of these mad mustachio-purple-hued malt worms.
1605		Shakespeare London Prodigal F4: Ile not let a sixpennie-purse escape me.
1632		Massinger City-Madam III i: [of a whore’s clients] Swaggering, suburbian roarers, Six-penny truckers.
1827		C. Lamb in Cornwall A Memoir (1866) 208: ’Tis a little sixpenny thing.
1897		T.J. Henry Claude Garton 270: ‘Ha, ha, ha, old man. This is the way to run a sixpenny show. [...] I know my marks at a glance now’.

SE in slang uses

In compounds

sixpenny rush (n.)

(Irish) cheap admission to children’s matinées at the cinema.

1995

‘Gabriel Byrne – The Irishman Comet’ on Gabriel Byrne OnLine 🌐 About that time, my grandmother got me hooked on the sixpenny rush. She took me to the pictures for the first time and that was all I needed.

sixpennyworth (n.)

a six-month prison sentence.

1984

Partridge DSUE (8th edn) 1075/2: [...] since ca. 1945.

In phrases

have a sixpenny-bit up one’s backside (v.)

to be very happy.

1980

T. Lewis GBH 174: ‘Eddie told me what you done [...] Come in here earlier on like he’d got a sixpenny-bit up his backside.’.

sixpenny suburb-sinnet (n.) (also sixpenny damnation, sixpenny sinfulness) [SE sixpenny, the prostitute’s usual fee + play on SE sinnet, a trumpet-blast that introduced actors on the stage/SE sinner]

a prostitute.

1604		Marston Malcontent V iv: ’Tis as common, as natural to a courtier, as jealousy to a citizen [...] or an empty handbasket to one of those sixpenny damnations.
1607		Dekker & Webster Westward Hoe V i: Saile with the rest of your baudie-traffikers to the place of sixe-penny Sinfulnesse the subvrbes.
1607		Dekker Jests to Make you Merrie in Grosart Works (1886) II 297: Two friends having drunke much Tobacco, as they sate together in a chamber (one of which was in love with one of the sixpeny suburb-sinnets that lay in the Spittle in Shorediftich).