…that would have been my next computer after my Commodore VIC-20. $600 back in 1983 would be over $2000 in 2026. There was really no way I was talking my grandmother in to buying me a $2000 home computer back when folks were still unsure why anyone would want a home computer.
But, if I did, I’d be much more excited about the return of Commodore. The FPGA recreation, where they are making them using the original molds from the 1980s, has sold over 20,000 units. Likewise, reports of TheC64 (an emulator that looks like a mini C64) estimated to have sold over 300,000 units tells me the love Commodore users had for their 8-bit machines still lives on the same way it does in our CoCo community for our 8-bit systems.
Commodore 64 for sale at Best Buy?
Today I learned that the replica Commodore 64s are for sale at Best Buy (for shipment only, through a third party seller):
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?id=pcat17071&st=Commodore
We live in wonderful times.
Historically, the C64 is the “largest selling computer model of all time” — a feat we will likely never see beaten since modern PCs and Macs have such a short lifespan on store shelves before they are replaced by a different model. While overall there have been more Macs or PCs sold, those have all been different models over the years. (This is the main thing I had against “more PCs sold than Macs” back in the 1990s — you were comparing thousands and thousands of different PC models collectively against a handful of Mac models; but as soon as you compared individual models, the iMac was one of the largest models sold of any computer of its era.)
And the VIC-20, too!
The VIC-20 was far from the best selling system of its era, yet even it got a TheVIC20 release in a full size replica model with an emulator inside. I had to order main from the UK, so it annoyingly has the “correct” spelling of Colour instead of the Americanized version ;-)
There have also been replicas of things like the ZX Spectrum and other “obscure to us in the USA” models.
Maybe one day they will come for our community and we’ll see a mainstream emulator replica of a CoCo.
One can hope.
Congrats, new Commodore. Maybe I can finally get that C64 I would have loved to have 40 years ago.