No, no, Jackie, the counters were the next step up the accountancy food chain from tally sticks. They weren't money, they were literally "counters", the same as you would use in Snakes and Ladders or Ludo or any other board game. They were substitutes for various quantities of money. In a time when people, by and large, were slightly more illiterate and innumerate than most are now, the counters were a way of keeping track of who owed what to whom. Not sure precisely how the counters were used, but I presume that the counters pertaining to a particular individual would be kept in a box or on a notched board so that you could, at a glance, tell how much someone owed or was owed.