How many c64 (and c128) were actually sold?

by Dave McMurtrie · July 5, 2021

10,594,000 total unit sales of the Commodore 64 throughout the lifetime of the company.
1,756,000 total unit sales of the Commodore 128 throughout the lifetime of the company.
12,350,000 combined unit sales of the Commodore 64 and Commodore 128 throughout the lifetime of the company.

How many Commodore 64 (and Commodore 128) were actually sold?

Unit sales numbers of the Commodore 64 have been greatly exaggerated over the years, with previous estimates ranging from 12.5 million to 30 million. 12.5 million is generally accepted as the most accurate number, but even that is too high

Using Commodore’s annual reports to shareholders as a primary source of information, and using internal documentation provided by Commodore International Limited’s former Treasurer, Don Greenbaum, as a backing and corroborating source, I arrived at what I believe are the most accurate unit sales figures to date.

Combined C64 and C128 total lifetime unit sales

Unit sales numbers were published in Commodore’s annual reports over the years, so if you read every annual report you can add the numbers from each report and arrive at a final tally of 12,350,000 combined c64 and c128 unit sales over the life of the company. No estimation, speculation, or projections are required to arrive at this total. I merely had to compile the numbers Commodore published over the years.

The table below represents combined c64 and c128 unit sales throughout Commodore’s lifetime. These numbers are not estimates. They are the actual unit sales numbers published by Commodore. These numbers include all C64 and C128 unit sales for all geographic regions. It was confirmed in the video posted below by Don Greenbaum that these numbers also include SX-64, and Drean unit sales. Returns and refurb sales are also accounted for. I am confident in stating that Commodore sold 12,350,000 combined Commodore 64 and Commodore 128 units over the lifetime of the company.

Fiscal Year	Combined C64 and C128 unit sales
FY82	0
FY83	500,000
FY84	2,500,000
FY85	2,000,000
FY86	1,900,000
FY87	1,100,000
FY88	1,000,000
FY89	1,000,000
FY90	700,000
FY91	800,000
FY92	650,000
FY93	200,000
FY94	0
Total	12,350,000

However, because Commodore combined C64 and C128 unit sales numbers as the “C64 family of computers” in their annual reports, that total doesn’t tell us specifically how many C64 were sold. We have detailed, separate unit sales data for the C64 and C128 for FY86 from internal reports provided by Don Greenbaum, so I used those to split out unit sales for FY86. For FY87 through FY89, I used my own projections from the actual FY86 unit sales. Therefore, the separate c64/c128 unit sales for FY87-FY89 are not backed by published numbers from Commodore, but my estimates do add up to Commodore’s published combined total unit sales. I estimate total lifetime Commodore 64 unit sales to be 10,594,000 and total lifetime Commodore 128 unit sales to be 1,756,000.

Fiscal Year	C64 Unit Sales	C128 Unit Sales
FY82	0	0
FY83	500,000	0
FY84	2,500,000	0
FY85	2,000,000	0
FY86	1,200,000	700,000
FY87	704,000	396,000
FY88	640,000	360,000
FY89	700,000	300,000
FY90	700,000	0
FY91	800,000	0
FY92	650,000	0
FY93	200,000	0
FY94	0	0
Total	10,594,000	1,756,000

If you’d like to see how I arrived at these numbers, I created a video where I walk through the numbers in great detail, with references to every source document, and a guest appearance by Commodore’s former Treasurer, Don Greenbaum, who walks us through Commodore’s corporate structure and explains how sales were accounted for.

Dispelling Previous Myths

The largest myth that needs to be dispelled is the notion put forth in a usenet post from 2002 that Commodore’s 1993 annual report states, “17M total C64, 4.5M C128”. The original usenet post can be read on Google Groups.

This claim was repeated over the years and published on various websites. Because of this, it became “the truth” and people continue to cite total unit sales of 17 million C64 and 4.5 million C128 as gospel, 22 years later. I’ve seen forum posts where people have claimed to have read the 1993 annual report and confirmed it themselves. It’s simply not true. There is no mention whatsoever of total unit sales of the C64 and C128 in Commodore’s 1993 Annual Report to Shareholders. You can read the entire 1993 annual report at the link here.

You will find c64 total unit sales for fiscal years 1991, 1992, and 1993 in the 1993 annual report, and I used those numbers to generate my results, but nowhere in Commodore’s 1993 Annual Report to Shareholders does it say that Commodore sold 17 milllion C64s and 4.5 million C128s.

Commodore’s actual numbers

Any conclusions derived from the incorrect citation from the ’93 annual report of 17 million c64 and 4.5 million c128 must be deemed inaccurate. So what do Commodore’s numbers say?

If you follow along in the video I posted above, you’ll see that Commodore reported Commodore 64 and 128 numbers in their annual reports using terms such as “with an installed base of”, and “over one million sold” for a given year. They don’t provide exact sales figures to the unit in a spreadsheet, but that’s not the purpose of an annual report to shareholders. However, if you track what Commodore published in their annual reports year after year, the numbers they provide make sense and add up to a reasonably accurate total by the 1993 annual report. We can be extremely confident in the 12,350,000 combined total of c64 and c128 unit sales.

Because of generous contributions in the form of internal reports that I’ve received from Don Greenbaum, the former Treasurer of Commodore International Limited, we now have extremely detailed unit sales numbers for everything from c64 to c128, to monitors and disk drives. These are actual, internally generated, confidential sales reports created by Commodore. None of the sales numbers are estimates or speculative. Unfortunately, we don’t have these detailed reports for the entire duration of C64/C128 sales, but for the years we do have, we can compare these detailed numbers with the approximations provided in the annual reports and they’re in alignment.

Conclusions

We can conclude that the Guinness Book of Records estimate of something like “up to 30 million c64s sold” is wildly inaccurate. Every previous estimate of c64 and c128 sales is inflated. There’s nothing to support anywhere close to those numbers. Given the documentation we have, I’m comfortable listing the combined total of c64/c128 unit sales to be 12,350,000. The only estimates I had to make in my numbers were in splitting unit sales between c64 and c128 for fiscal years 1987-1989. Every other number is based on actual data and not estimated. There’s no argument against the total that Commodore themselves reported.

Until such time that we receive detailed internal sales reports for FY87-FY89, my estimates for those years are as good as we’ll get, but the total until sales cannot be disputed unless some better source of documentation is discovered.