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Steve,
I know you are one of the great archivists in our hobby, so if you haven't found it, it probably does not exist.
Can we agree that question is: which manufacture offered the first color set for sale to the home consumer?
The ad you found says "ready to ship now .... to your home ...." That's strong evidence. The February 24, 1954 article and photo shows an actual Admiral color set in an appliance store. It could be they were only taking orders or it could be the store had a limited supply in stock. We don't know. The thing is, which manufacture offered a color set for sale first. The evidence so far as I understand it is that Admiral put their set on sale December 30, 1953. When was the first color set by any manufacture delivered to a home consumer, (not professional) we don't know.
There were 7 RCA Model 5's color sets and at least 1 Admiral displaying the Rose parade in my hometown Milwaukee. Admiral said they wanted to have at least 1 color set for the distributors in the 21 cities in the color network for the Rose parade.
As for numbers of color sets sold, I think what we know is RCA was the leader. As far as who first offered a color set for sale was not RCA.
I believe Admiral was based out of Chicago. If we scour the Chicago Tribune archives, we may find an even earlier article about the Admiral color set.
I have a question for all. As far as I know, only one Admiral color set exists, am I wrong? We know of more Westinghouse sets in collectors hands. Why so few Admiral color sets?
Why haven’t more Admiral C1617A color sets been found? A theory, perhaps it’s because the set was lost in obscurity to the marketing blitz, publicity and hoopla of RCA. Most likely, Admiral watched the slow sales of color sets, not only their own but from RCA and stopped production just as RCA did with their first color set. Other speculation is Admiral produced very few color sets in 1953/54. But numbers do not disqualify who was first.
It was reported that the CBS-Columbia 12CC2 produced approximately 200 units and only sold 100 of them. The Westinghouse H840CK15 reportedly only sold 30 units in the first few months of sale and an unknown amount later. Do we erase their marks in history?
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