As a lefty, this is very close to my heart!

Orchestral strings is so 'righty' biased it makes my blood boil! This is heartbreaking for lefty's. I found similar with guitars, walk into any guitar shop and if you are lucky there will be one low-end lefty guitar among 100 top notch righty's. Go to a violin shop and they look at you like you're an alien! Some stores I have visited admit they have never even SEEN a lefty violin. (I had never held a violin until 18months ago, I am 57)

I do understand the commercial point of view, there is probably less than one in a hundred leftys who want to learn violin, so as a business, making lefty violins en masse would close your business pretty quickly. 

Yes, they are around, and luckilly I found a decent student violin by Gewa (the 'Ideale') which I am currently trying to eke tone from! Lolol

As a mature learner, and having played lefty guitars for 40yrs, starting violin righty would never work for me, but I would say that for a youngster or someone coming to violin without experience on other string instruments, starting righty would be the sensible thing to do. It pains me to say it, but its a no-brainer. 

What really breaks my heart is that I cannot walk into a store and try different makes and models, I cannot pick up a lovely old fiddle just to experience that tone, I cannot make comparisons, I cannot test or pick and choose shoulder rests or chin rests (try finding a choice of lefty chin rests!!!!!!) and I promise I'm not bitter and twisted. Honest.....

However, a huge huge monster thumbs up for even mentioning lefty's.... I think this is a first in my 'all things fiddle' web searches.... Mebbe I have found a home here!