Handling large pools of resources

Just have resources come in different denominations (1s, 5s, 10s for instance). The game I'm currently designing has been pared down so that people never have more than 20 or so little cubes to deal with, but in its original conception, I got bigger ones to count as 5s...

What if you expanded the distance between denominations? Say, 1-5-25? or even 1-5-50? This would drastically cut down on the number of tokens, but also reduce the frequency of bookkeeping tasks (although it would admittedly be a bit more work when it did happen). I'm assuming from your description that these resources are remaining in a fixed pool, and that you don't need to split them up too often. I personally find the symmetry of 1-5-25 appealing.

Another option in lieu of a paper counter would be a two digit countdown in some fashion, possibly with two d10 or two 10 space tracks on the board. Still not a lovely solution, but perhaps a bit more compact than a full track of 100 spaces.

One of my hands is large enough to hold about 100 small cubes. So... as long as you are only required to redeem a few at a time ( 1 to 5 ), I don't see any reason that players would not be able to pay from their 'horde'. It might actually be fun. I know that a lot of players like to organize their extra tokens into rows and columns, 3D shapes and other aesthetic and mnemonic orientations during games of Catan. And, poker players don't seem to mind the task of organizing their chips as they want to.

Having a horde of cubes also allows you to monitor better how fast you are spending them. People notice dwindling piles a little better than dwindling denominations. So... there could be a benefit to using cubes over say play money. However, the biggest problem with a horde of cubes is counting out the right amount at setup.

But, it really all depends upon what you need to use this counting system for.

Without knowing anything about your game, my suggestion is to see if you really need that large a pool? 100 tokens provides a lot of granularity -- well, 100 granules to be exact, heh. If these are spent 5-10 per turn, does it affect the game too much if you divided all costs by 5 and round fractions whichever way feels best? So players just start with 20 tokens and are spending 1 or 2 per turn, etc. Does the benefit of being able to finely tune costs against a scale of 100 points outweigh the fiddliness and component costs versus a scale of just 20 points?

As long as you are using off-the-shelf game components (cubes, d6s, meeples, gameboards, cards, flat tokens) don't worry about the production cost. They will be negligible in the end even in high quantities due to economies of scale. Whenever you have to create a custom piece (sculptures, contraption or holographic print), then a publisher might balk upon reading your design. But, you should not prematurely limit yourself based simply on quantity. That can usually be accommodated by a higher price.

On a related note: I have been paying more attention recently to the tactile experience of games. People like to handle things when they play and move things around. But there is also a limit to that pleasure: when it is tedious, monotonous, busywork or the variety of pieces results in combinatorial explosion. So, I would be concerned more by the experience of tracking health/points/resources than by its production or prototyping feasibility.

Someone else already mentioned the tokens having different denominations...but what about regions of a play mat?

I remember in Agricola: there are little tiles with a " x5 " on them to indicate a multiple of 5 for any resource placed upon them. Although that seemed a little fiddly to me, perhaps having a playing mat or card for each player might solve this issue. Simply shift the tokens around to the different regions so that the indicated multiple serves to help the player count their tokens.

Five tokens on the " x10 " region means 50 tokens, 3 tokens on the " x5 " region counts up to 15 of that resource; etc. You could even have tokens of different types on each of those regions, and a player could still identify the total of all resources. Players could still have that "tactile" feeling mentioned eariler, and they can arrange their tokens as they see fit in the corresponding regions.

Makes me think of Roman numerals for some reason... Like you could plaster a big X in one region of the play mat, and that indicates 10, the V indicates 5, and so on. Might not fit in with the theme of your game, however.