To say something is “blue chip,” as in an investment, a stock or a company, means that it is of the highest quality. The term comes from the game of poker, where small discs, called tokens or chips, are used to represent money. Early versions of poker chips had the following values: white - $1, red - $5 and blue - $25. A blue chip, thereby, was the token with the greatest value. The expression emerged during the 1920s when a Dow Jones employee, in response to seeing stocks trade at the very high value of $200-$250 per share, said he was going to “write about these blue-chip stocks.” The phrase stuck and has become a popular figure of speech for something of substantial quality.