I shipped everything back to Don after I scanned and archived it. It was really great of him to allow me to archive everything. The sad part is he said he threw away several filing cabinets of old Commodore documents not long before we got in touch.
I will always have a soft spot for Commodore. The C64 was purchased early on, and then later upgraded to a C128. In fact, I still have it. Along with 3 floppy drives (two 1571's and an Indus GT), 512K expansion, a case to hold the two 1571s and some various other pieces. Also have a handful of books, including harder to find volumes like Mapping the Commodore 128. I will probably never use it again, but it stands as a nostalgia piece. Fun memories.
Great video! Very interesting and well illustrated analysis. There are some much higher numbers floating around but I've never seen any of them backed up by any papers. It's more like they wanted the total to be as high as possible so they summed up the highest numbers they could find including overlapping counts. There's no need to exaggerate the numbers to make the C64 the best selling computer of all time. We all know it was the best computer of all time no matter what.
Great Update, couldn’t believe it when you said the last video on this was a couple of years ago already. Nice to see that I was one of the 800,000 units in FY91.
I had dinner with a group of people after WOC in 2022 including David Pleasance (UK director). He verbally reported as many as 28-30 million. Apparently Commodore under reported the actual units for tax/duty purposes...Who knows? Thanks for the update.
I'm friends with David, and he's a spectacular fella. I even wrote the foreword for one of his Vultures books! I'm certain he wasn't lying about that, but I think it's a figure that got tossed around so often it just became the truth. I'm always willing to learn more about this and do another updated video if I need to. So far, what you see here is what I've been able to uncover.
Same. It makes sense that the C64 took off like it did in the beginning. It was the right machine at the right time at the right price point. The fact that they sold 800,000 C64s in 1991 is astonishing to me.
@@commodorehistory I bought my second C64 in 1992. My first one had died a few years before that, and I didn't even know that a new model had been made. One day I went to the big local department store, and right at the entry was a big pyramid of C64C boxes. Couldn't believe what I saw - is that stunning looking machine really a C64? And they sell pyramids of them in 1992? Read every word on all sides of the box, ok, got it, this is a C64. Simply had to buy one. Still woks. Bought another one a few years ago.
Excellent research, thank you. I have just one remark that will unfortunately skew your total C64 numbers by "cloud" number. If you go back and listen to Don closely, you will find out one important fact you do not calculate with. Commodore (as many other tech companies did) is counting the sales for units sold in B2B relation and not the B2C. Why is this important? Well the 10.594.000 sold C64 units does not reflect the number of units moved to end customers like me or you. There are many units that do not sell and are scraped at the end, either by producer as returns or by the retail seller. Especially at the EOL of the product, the overall percentage is not marginal usually. And another factor Don was talking about and you may missed is that they had a percentage of returned units, especially after Christmas market, and according to Don these units got refurbished/repaired and sold AGAIN. So there is a fair percentage of units that got sold twice or even more times and this is not reflected in the annual reports at all. And while one may think that this is not that important, we are talking about 5-10% of units at least. So in reality we may speak about 1.6 million units less units realistically sold to end customers. We will never know, but we can speculate, right?
Go back and listen again. Don explicitly mentioned that the sales were booked when they got to the retailers. He even mentioned K-Mart. Second, refurbs and returns were accounted for. Don also mentioned that. It’s why he said tracking by fiscal year is likely more accurate because the returns are accounted for by then. When product was sold, it was counted as a unit sales. If a product was returned it was counted as a negative unit sale. If that product was refurbished and sold again, it was counted as a sale again, so it was only counted once. By the way, if they were counting double for refurbished sales, the actual sales number would be lower, not higher. If you look at some of the reports I show in this video, you’ll notice negative numbers for some products in the unit sales column. That’s due to accounting for returned product across report boundaries.
@@commodorehistory _Don explicitly mentioned that the sales were booked when they got to the retailers_ and that is exactly what I said, sales were booked on B2B base, not B2C. Which means that we know how many units reached retail stores, but we dont know how many units really reached average Joes. _Second, refurbs and returns were accounted for_ no that is not what Don said, well partially. What he meant is that the total Saldo was spot on at the end of fiscal year, that does not mean the unit returned/refurbished number was accounted for. No company is doing that in annual reports, its not important, only the Dollars. And it makes the unit number looks nicer to shareholders while it is not fraud, since its the real number for the invoiced units in total. Some companies do not even state the unit number moved in their annual reports, as I said Dollars are important. _By the way, if they were counting double for refurbished sales, the actual sales number would be lower, not higher_ and that is what I said, that the total number may be 1.6 millions lower. _If you look at some of the reports I show in this video, you’ll notice negative numbers for some products in the unit sales column_ as I mention many produced units that are EOL or non reparable and still on stock are often scraped, thats the negative number, since they have to depart from the stock. For example A1000 not sold before 1990 got scraped.
Sorry I misunderstood your first point. Yes, we agree that if Commodore sold 1000 c64s to K-Mart and there was a warehouse fire at K-Mart and all 1000 c64s were consumed by a fire, no end users would ever purchase them and that would have counted as 1000 c64s sold. I assure you that I asked Don about returns and refurbs before I made the video. What you see in the video isn’t the first conversation I had with him. According to Don, returns and refurbs were accounted for in the annual report sales numbers. Perhaps Don has a UA-cam account and can reply directly.
@@commodorehistory well that would be great if he can clarify. I ran a company for twenty years and it is not a practice in bookkeeping to care about numbers of items other then quantity for multiplication of the sum. If you sell something from your inventory its sold, no matter if you did it one, two or many more times. I believe you misunderstood what Don told you, but then again if he can clarify it would be great.
Returns and refurbs may have been significant in the early years, but the later, more integrated machines are very reliable; even today a C64C not in a working condition seems rather rare.
Welli throught that there were 10 or 16 million C64 systems sold, but if it turns out that only 5 million motherboards were ever produced and shipped (including up & down graded versions of the C64), then i could consider myself lucky owning an originsl C64 wich i boight 2 years ago on ebey for under $100 bucks😁
The Mother Boards used in the Drean ( Argentina ) were originally flawed and defective as in Motherboards had some kind of flaw in the factory testing (Failed ) , from my understanding Commodore international had factories send these defective motherboards too DREAN and Drean would then attempt too repair/fix the flaws on the mother board.. from other Motherboards or spare motherboard parts .. this tiny problem really has no meaning as numbers sold of the DREAN C64 would of been a very small number anyhow .. thing is , would a flawed C64 motherboard still be countable let alone traceable. at the factory or when the Drean had Sold the repaired C64 Motherboard for a Sale ..
whole sale vs retail. Where did all $ go ???????????????????????? I am sure some of it went to the place I bought it from. But someone must have made out like a bandit! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
COMMODORE 64 FOREVER 😺👍🕹️! Press play on tape LOAD LOAD"*",8,1 LOAD"$",8 AMIGA FOREVER 😺👍🕹️! Insert disk 💾 2 Happy new retrospective year 2025 from Vantaa, Finland 🇫🇮 😺👍🕹️.
If that doesn't settle the debate, I don't know what will. Excellent work, as always, Dave. Thank you!
See some of the comments here. The debate rages on! Thanks for the kind words, Golan :)
i had mine as a christmas present in 83 because of good grades but i had to repeat that same year because of just gaming.
So cool that he kept all that stuff, and finally found a home for it 40 years later :)
I shipped everything back to Don after I scanned and archived it. It was really great of him to allow me to archive everything. The sad part is he said he threw away several filing cabinets of old Commodore documents not long before we got in touch.
@commodorehistory always the way 😞
I will always have a soft spot for Commodore. The C64 was purchased early on, and then later upgraded to a C128. In fact, I still have it. Along with 3 floppy drives (two 1571's and an Indus GT), 512K expansion, a case to hold the two 1571s and some various other pieces. Also have a handful of books, including harder to find volumes like Mapping the Commodore 128. I will probably never use it again, but it stands as a nostalgia piece. Fun memories.
Awesome, thanks for the amazing investigation.
Thanks for watching!
1:05 it's almost the shrine of commodore :-D these beauties lined up left, right and center are a sight to behold =)
Great video, Dave! Thank you for the work you put in!
Thanks for watching, George!
This is gold! Thank you very much💪🏻💪🏻
Glad you liked it!
Thank you, and thank you Don for providing all the data. What a marvel.
You’re welcome. Thanks for the kind words.
Great video!
Very interesting and well illustrated analysis.
There are some much higher numbers floating around but I've never seen any of them backed up by any papers. It's more like they wanted the total to be as high as possible so they summed up the highest numbers they could find including overlapping counts.
There's no need to exaggerate the numbers to make the C64 the best selling computer of all time. We all know it was the best computer of all time no matter what.
Great video Dave!! Amazing information!
Thanks so much, Jeff! I appreciate you watching and taking the time to provide positive feedback.
Great Update, couldn’t believe it when you said the last video on this was a couple of years ago already. Nice to see that I was one of the 800,000 units in FY91.
Same! I did the first one in 2021. Doesn't seem that long ago. Thanks for watching this one!
These earlier annual reports to shareholders had very nice designs I wouldn't have minded being used in the manuals.
I had dinner with a group of people after WOC in 2022 including David Pleasance (UK director). He verbally reported as many as 28-30 million. Apparently Commodore under reported the actual units for tax/duty purposes...Who knows? Thanks for the update.
I'm friends with David, and he's a spectacular fella. I even wrote the foreword for one of his Vultures books! I'm certain he wasn't lying about that, but I think it's a figure that got tossed around so often it just became the truth. I'm always willing to learn more about this and do another updated video if I need to. So far, what you see here is what I've been able to uncover.
I loved my C64, but I loved my Amiga even more. I find it interesting that during the Amiga years.... Commodore actually sold more C64s.
Same. It makes sense that the C64 took off like it did in the beginning. It was the right machine at the right time at the right price point. The fact that they sold 800,000 C64s in 1991 is astonishing to me.
@@commodorehistory I bought my second C64 in 1992. My first one had died a few years before that, and I didn't even know that a new model had been made. One day I went to the big local department store, and right at the entry was a big pyramid of C64C boxes. Couldn't believe what I saw - is that stunning looking machine really a C64? And they sell pyramids of them in 1992? Read every word on all sides of the box, ok, got it, this is a C64. Simply had to buy one. Still woks. Bought another one a few years ago.
molto interessanti questi dati!
Excellent research, thank you. I have just one remark that will unfortunately skew your total C64 numbers by "cloud" number. If you go back and listen to Don closely, you will find out one important fact you do not calculate with. Commodore (as many other tech companies did) is counting the sales for units sold in B2B relation and not the B2C. Why is this important? Well the 10.594.000 sold C64 units does not reflect the number of units moved to end customers like me or you. There are many units that do not sell and are scraped at the end, either by producer as returns or by the retail seller. Especially at the EOL of the product, the overall percentage is not marginal usually. And another factor Don was talking about and you may missed is that they had a percentage of returned units, especially after Christmas market, and according to Don these units got refurbished/repaired and sold AGAIN. So there is a fair percentage of units that got sold twice or even more times and this is not reflected in the annual reports at all. And while one may think that this is not that important, we are talking about 5-10% of units at least. So in reality we may speak about 1.6 million units less units realistically sold to end customers. We will never know, but we can speculate, right?
Go back and listen again. Don explicitly mentioned that the sales were booked when they got to the retailers. He even mentioned K-Mart. Second, refurbs and returns were accounted for. Don also mentioned that. It’s why he said tracking by fiscal year is likely more accurate because the returns are accounted for by then. When product was sold, it was counted as a unit sales. If a product was returned it was counted as a negative unit sale. If that product was refurbished and sold again, it was counted as a sale again, so it was only counted once. By the way, if they were counting double for refurbished sales, the actual sales number would be lower, not higher. If you look at some of the reports I show in this video, you’ll notice negative numbers for some products in the unit sales column. That’s due to accounting for returned product across report boundaries.
@@commodorehistory _Don explicitly mentioned that the sales were booked when they got to the retailers_
and that is exactly what I said, sales were booked on B2B base, not B2C. Which means that we know how many units reached retail stores, but we dont know how many units really reached average Joes.
_Second, refurbs and returns were accounted for_
no that is not what Don said, well partially. What he meant is that the total Saldo was spot on at the end of fiscal year, that does not mean the unit returned/refurbished number was accounted for. No company is doing that in annual reports, its not important, only the Dollars. And it makes the unit number looks nicer to shareholders while it is not fraud, since its the real number for the invoiced units in total.
Some companies do not even state the unit number moved in their annual reports, as I said Dollars are important.
_By the way, if they were counting double for refurbished sales, the actual sales number would be lower, not higher_
and that is what I said, that the total number may be 1.6 millions lower.
_If you look at some of the reports I show in this video, you’ll notice negative numbers for some products in the unit sales column_
as I mention many produced units that are EOL or non reparable and still on stock are often scraped, thats the negative number, since they have to depart from the stock. For example A1000 not sold before 1990 got scraped.
Sorry I misunderstood your first point. Yes, we agree that if Commodore sold 1000 c64s to K-Mart and there was a warehouse fire at K-Mart and all 1000 c64s were consumed by a fire, no end users would ever purchase them and that would have counted as 1000 c64s sold.
I assure you that I asked Don about returns and refurbs before I made the video. What you see in the video isn’t the first conversation I had with him. According to Don, returns and refurbs were accounted for in the annual report sales numbers. Perhaps Don has a UA-cam account and can reply directly.
@@commodorehistory well that would be great if he can clarify. I ran a company for twenty years and it is not a practice in bookkeeping to care about numbers of items other then quantity for multiplication of the sum. If you sell something from your inventory its sold, no matter if you did it one, two or many more times.
I believe you misunderstood what Don told you, but then again if he can clarify it would be great.
Returns and refurbs may have been significant in the early years, but the later, more integrated machines are very reliable; even today a C64C not in a working condition seems rather rare.
I accept no number under 30 million 🙂
Welli throught that there were 10 or 16 million C64 systems sold, but if it turns out that only 5 million motherboards were ever produced and shipped (including up & down graded versions of the C64), then i could consider myself lucky owning an originsl C64 wich i boight 2 years ago on ebey for under $100 bucks😁
I have a very reliable source (my tuxedo cat named Sparky) that Commodore sold between 80 to 175 Billion Commodore 64's. Seems legit.
The audio was a little garbled when Don talked aboutSX64 numbers, what is the number he mentioned? I know it's insignificant but I'm just curious.
That was me talking over him. I'm not exactly Barbara Walters.... He didn't cite a number. He just said the numbers were insignificant.
So the success of my favorite computer has been greatly exaggerated (in some estimates)?
That would seem to be the case, yes. But if I learn otherwise, I'll absolutely post an updated video.
Didn't you already do this video? I can't find the original now.
Yeah, I never liked the first video, so it’s unlisted. I’ll shoot you a link on discord
The Mother Boards used in the Drean ( Argentina ) were originally flawed and defective as in Motherboards had some kind of flaw in the factory testing (Failed ) , from my understanding Commodore international had factories send these defective motherboards too DREAN and Drean would then attempt too repair/fix the flaws on the mother board.. from other Motherboards or spare motherboard parts .. this tiny problem really has no meaning as numbers sold of the DREAN C64 would of been a very small number anyhow .. thing is , would a flawed C64 motherboard still be countable let alone traceable. at the factory or when the Drean had Sold the repaired C64 Motherboard for a Sale ..
whole sale vs retail. Where did all $ go ???????????????????????? I am sure some of it went to the place I bought it from. But someone must have made out like a bandit! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Irving Gould
Wasted on the development on the Amiga
COMMODORE 64 FOREVER 😺👍🕹️!
Press play on tape
LOAD
LOAD"*",8,1
LOAD"$",8
AMIGA FOREVER 😺👍🕹️!
Insert disk 💾 2
Happy new retrospective year 2025
from Vantaa, Finland 🇫🇮 😺👍🕹️.