The game is not rare by any means but people are trying to make it seem rare by asking high prices for them. It's less common for sure but not rare. Definitely not worth the $200-$300 range people ask for CIB ones.

It's easier to hype and flip something you can easily buy 200 copies of like Left Bros Mario 3 or Black Label Sonic 1 than something like Cheetahmen II where you can probably only buy 1-2 copies at all if you're going to try to hype it. It started with some nonsensical sales of mediocre graded copies on Heritage Auctions early this year unless I'm wrong. A CIB copy sold for $5k a few months ago.

I think it's a combination of speculators hoping games imitate comics (Hulk 181 is a dirt common book that sells for $1000s because people love Wolverine that much, plus it got hoarded to hell of course) and flippers taking advantage of the fact that only so many copies are for sale at a time, so by buying out Ebay they can make it look like Lefty Mario 3s are actually scarce when they're not at all.

I guess people don't do their research when buying games.

I've never seen a left side variant and I check each time I'm in a used game store that has no clue about that stuff. I checked my entire stash once I heard about it and all I have is the manual.

This displeases me. I'm having a hard enough time trying to get a normal, decent quality CIB without all this nonsense.

What exactly is this? Pictures?

I would agree. I think many of the comic speculators have moved onto videogames, hoping to get all the sealed copies of rare and/or of sought out after games, but especially the not so rare but sought after games, so they can get them "cheap" and turn em into VGA graded or whatever grading company people trust the most these days and profit from it. Don't know if doing that by holding to these games for 2-5 years and then sell em counts as quick profit, but I guess that's what they want before it all turns into the comics scene again and prices drop for most of the common, uncommon and rare games that no one actually wants, and then sealed copies end up losing value. 
I don't know about you guys, but after December I'm stopping like 98% of my retro buys, since I already got most of the games I wanted and I don't want to pay 60€+ for a used CIB game anymore. 
 

 

Same, I only have the left manual

Oh is it the placement of the "bros" text?

edit: just checked my CIB, no such luck

This version of the game also has some fun grammatical errors inside the game. I also have this variant completely CIB (all inserts and baggie for the cart too).  

I find this to be a fun variant!

I think it makes sense why they changed the placement, it's kinda hard to read "Bros." on the box with the hand in the way.

I’ve yet to see one as well. Store owner I know has close to 50 copies none are lefty’s. He also says he doesn’t see them often at all. 

Maybe they arent uncommon but ive yet tonsee one. 

Huh. The left aligned placement is weirding me out. That was intentional? Who thought that was a good place to put that text there?

Cool. I didn't know about this variant. I have this boxed.

The left bros. is the first print so it's not a variant. I agree that the bros on the right looks better.

Huh that's the style of SMB3 I've always had since it came out with Bros to the left. I knew there were two kinds but never really put thought into the where or why about it.

It's part of the current first print enthusiasm. It has the important factors--easy to identify and popular franchise.

It totally bothers me that Left Bros. is collectively considered the first print during first print madness when there are at least 3 Left Bros. print runs. One of the Left Bros. is the first print, it’s probably the one with the lowest number on the inner flap but it’s an educated guess. If the first print matters and everything else is trash, only the actual first print is the first print but in Mario 3’s case it’s currently a collective of prints.

No one cared about Mario 3 variants valuewise 6 months ago so maybe this is just another thing that will evolve with time. More like I think it’s because people can’t as easily hoard and hype up a much harder to find, more specific variant.

This is true, but only confirmable on a CIB where you can examine the inside flap as far as I'm aware.  Thus all 3 variants would get lumped into "first print" on a sealed game, hence the dilemma. 

I don't really know why this bothers people. The inflation in price won't affect people who don't care about whether games are first prints, which seems to be the majority of people on this forum including myself. We can still buy a SMB3 for the same price as before and let other people pay $5k for a first print.

It's been sneaking upward over the last year, but it's not particularly hard to find. There are so many copies of SMB3 going up on eBay every week that you can easily get one for the same price as a "Right Bros" if you set an alert. Just a weird byproduct of first print enthusiasm due to WATA/Heritage hype.

I have 3 copies of the "left Bros" - all 3 have the code "NES-UM-USA" inside the flap along with a number - 91208.  What is the other version?
 

I have two with 91219. I think 00119 is the likely first and rarest, but I imagine relatively few people have ever looked deeply into it.