I don't remember what my first chip was that started me on the road to singles, but it was probably this one:

I collected all manner of Empress (Joliet) chips for a long time to use in my home poker games & acquired over 7000 of them before liquidating most of them. I *think* that was the first $2.50 chip I remember seeing, then I noticed a few more, and the hook was set. Snappers are my primary focus. I'm only a couple years in so I'm still pretty new, but I've acquired about 400 different snappers & am always on the lookout for a good LCV or SCV I don't have yet!

While I started with snappers, I started to amass collections of other chips as well & eventually started to just collect any chips that I liked. I knew of the small crown mold early into my chipping days but didn't know there was a large crown version until some time later. Once I saw my first large crown I had to get an example of that mold for my own. This was the first large crown chip I ever acquired, landing it for a couple bucks on eBay. It started what I call my "island of misfit toys" binder - chips that were either non-denominational, larger than a $5, had an unusual base color for the given denomination (such as a red $1, a black $25, etc).