First Ad for color in 4/26/1954 Life Mag.

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by etype2

I have two sources that say Admiral manufactured 1000 15 inch color sets in 1953-54 and in April began shipping a “second series” of sets.

Westinghouse started production of the H840CK15 on January 10, 1954. They were “producing two dozen sets a day” and in production for 6 months. Even if one halved that production rate (slow start up, and slow downs) the production would be 2160 sets.

Going by surviving sets those numbers don't seem accurate. There's 178 known surviving CT-100s, 30 Westinghouse H840CK15s, and only 6 Admiral C1617As.
If survival rates were identical there'd be 2x as many surviving Westinghouse sets and 6x as many Admirals...I can believe that big of a difference in the Westinghouse, but the Admiral would need to be infamous for a recall, bad reliability (compared to the other sets), or something to explain a production that high and survival rate that dismal.

There are hand made prototypes with the same or better number of surviving sets than the Admiral.