Most of my chips came from some mini-roulette table games which I assume are similar to mini poker chips. (TBH I just bought them at a yard sale one day when I saw them and said “eh, they MIGHT fit my game’s current chips.”)
What was really annoying was that classic shipped with 5x red chips ONLY. Cardboard is annoying too, my friends are klutzes and spill on EVERYTHING (which is why I have a glass overlay for my board now, one that extends a bit beyond the table to avoid capillary action in case of spills that get to the edge)
So anyway, I want to attribute the increase in players to the myriad of games being released now. We had classic and revised for such a long time then suddenly we had anniversary, global 40, etc, etc, etc of little games, we had minitures come out.