The History of Poker Chips
It was not until the late 1800’s that the poker chips actually came into existence in America. Before the advent of poker chips, people used to play without chips making use of all the precious things like gold pellets, mined gemstones, expensive ores, minerals, and exotic food items.
As the game grew in stature, a need for standardized currency arose, which led to the invention of poker chips. People avoided carrying large amount of cash and poker chips provided them with a substitute to same value of cash. Today, you can have a mountain of chips in front of you — and isn’t that so much cooler than having cash money?
Soon the poker chips were being used everywhere, bars and gambling houses being the major players who collected a fee in return for safekeeping the cash and surrogating it with poker chips. The first chips made use of wood, bones etc but in late 1800’s clay poker chips replaced them.
Coming with the technological progression, new materials came into play like plastic and acrylic which provided a cheap and useful proxy to clay chips. Metals and ivory were also being used by some major gambling houses.