Frontiers are settled by the adventurous.
These practices carried over into America as well, but in America something unique happened.
The counters came in various shapes and sizes (including, for reasons that elude me, counters shaped like fish). In Europe, Whist and some other related card games were often played for stakes, and counters were used to keep track of how many stakes each player owed. The poker chips we know and love are descended from gaming tokens that have been used since ancient times. There's a reason for that, and it has to do with Poker (or perhaps even more importantly, the defunct game Faro). Jetons are common in Europe and chips are common in America.
