I don't know if you can call this answer "masterful," but here goes.
This article (entitled: "Snatch," "Hole," or "Honey-pot"? Semantic Categories and the Problem of Nonspecificity in Female Genital Slang.) is quite an extensive study on many, many statistical phenomena and anomalies when it comes to, as they call it, female genital slang. They also compare these slang Female Genitalia Terms (FGTs) by category to Male Genitalia Terms (MGTs).
This article is very extensive, so to highlight what they have to say about the term "tuppence" (which here falls under the "money" category):
FGTs contained both explicit (e.g., tuppence, thruppeny bit, Mrs Penny), and implicit (fur purse, pocket book) references to money. In most terms, the amount of money was very small, suggesting reference to money rather than to value. Many FGTs not coded with this category (e.g., fish, lettuce, quiff) have, historically, meant money (Wentworth &. Flexner, 1975), and many have simultaneously meant prostitute--Green's (1999) money category is identified as the money-maker. These terms suggest women's worth and value to be in their genitalia, and commodify the genitalia as objects to be purchased. Indeed, commodity was a sixteenth century British term, now obsolete, for the genital area (McConville & Shearlaw, 1984).
Thus, as @Garet Claborn intimated, this term seems to derive from referring to prostitutes, specifically cheap ones, and as they say points to women's worth (at least the opinion of the times) being in their genitalia.
With reference to your mention of whether or not this word enjoys usage, as you say a quick Google search will yield a number of hits connecting the word "tuppence" to a female genitalia reference. As for how widespread it is, a discussion on this forum suggests that it's not a very widespread and widely known word, one user saying the following:
I'm guessing that as Mummy, Walt Disney, Agatha Christie and my other half (parents from West London, raised in various locations across Europe) and the Online Oxford English Dictionary do not know the "front bottom" meaning [referring to tuppence], its geographical spread is limited.
Hope this answers your question.
It is commonly referred to as merit and stems from the rarity of gold and its use in medallions such as "Gold Medals." (Even this very Q&A board uses Gold / Silver / Bronze in its token system)
It is closest described as "priceless" when used in the context you described.
Best Answer
The term originates from Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, a novel about the eponymous character, who is stranded on an island and who saves a man brought to the island by cannibals for their main course. The man saved from the main table as the entree is understandably grateful and becomes Crusoe's loyal servant. The two have no common language at first, so Crusoe calls the man "Friday" after the day of the week of their propitious encounter.