Wer'e talking about albums that sold in the range of maybe 20 000 at most (and that was rare). At any rate, the music didn't shake up the establishment in the US in any way like it actually did in the UK where punk was genuinely popular; it was a marginalized subgenre that could thrive on a grassroots/DIY level for MANY years before the mainstream started to pay attention which I guess it started to do with Nirvana and those acts in the early 90's...