Terry, I was actually thinking the red/white box was rarer than the white die-cut box but wrote what I did because I was too lazy to look it up last night! I was thinking < 100K in each box type, knowing the white box went into the 150-9xxxx range and unsure of when the red/black box came about in the 151 range.
The transition points mentioned in RENE are high white box = 150-90725 (an RDA-34 that I spotted on GunBroker but did not buy) and low red/white box = 150-91330 (a rare low back RDA-86 w/shipper that I own that shipped late, so by the time it was boxed, the white boxes must have been used up).
I don't have a good feel for the transition point for the end of the red/white and start of the red/black. This is due to my own inconsistency of nomenclature concerning the flimsy red/white box. Sometimes I noted that in my spreadsheet as "Orange" and sometimes I noted it as "Red" (which confuses it with the red/black box).
But the highest red/white box that I definitely have (noted as Orange) is a NIB w/shipper SDA-84 numbered 151-36514.
And the lowest box noted as Red that I remember for certain being the red/black type is a NIB w/shipper GA-32RB at 151-56039.
That presents about a 20K range that needs to be refined. I have other guns in that range noted in Red box but don't recall offhand which red box type they are in. One at 151-49547 that I do recall is in a red/black box is a GS-84 but I have it noted as having no label on the box and no shipper, which leaves some question as to whether it is in the original box.
At any rate, the orangeish red/white box does indeed appear to be the rarest of the -Six DA boxes. But I think your estimate should be adjusted to somewhere in the 45K-65K guns shipped in that type box.
That orange box went into use for the DA's coincident with the transition from the low back old frame guns to the high back new frame guns. The new frame profile did not fit into the die-cut interior of the white box. So it seems that the orange box was used fairly briefly as a stop-gap until the red/black box was designed and printed. Why Ruger continued to use a special box for the DA's over the other handguns is somewhat of a mystery but it was a pet project and perhaps he wanted the packaging to stand out (or at least hold up) for the LE market that he was trying to capture.
Another thing that makes that orange box potentially rarer is that as flimsy as it was, it was much more likely to get tossed than was the more substantial white box with the die-cut interior. On the other hand, the flimsy orange box was used for the SA's and autos, so the actual box type is plentiful (that size being printed with RST4 auto info on the end, then any other type gun shipped in one had a sticker placed over the end to cover up that with the correct info). So really it is just the stickers that are rare!
