A lot of information was lost with Chiptalk, and the Protege competition was before my time. However, I believe that the basic color schemes were decided independent from the inlay designs. I’m not sure whether that factors into the yellow/tan $2, but there were a lot of iterations to the design. I’m pretty sure each inlay design also got to propose their own chip designs, but they generally stuck to the Protege scheme.
Ever have full rack anxiety if a chip goes missing? For multiple racks?