That "p" may be a lower-case p after all. Look at Fred's no-value chips in his pics. Definitely a lower case p, but the way they set the curved type doesn't allow for the "decender" on the p to go below the baseline. In the first group of chips, shown by Steve Gobel, on the inlay, I think that p is also lower case, just a slightly different font than on Fred's chips.

It DOES look odd though.

(I haven't thought about ascenders and decenders since I took an intro typographics class decades ago!

And talking about all those p's, I think I need to make a pit stop.