Apple’s claim with the Retina version of the iPad Mini was that it would go on sale “in November”, but it was coy about when in November that would be. It turns out that it’s right now.
Apple took its stores offline this afternoon, and they’ve reappeared with the iPad Mini available to order, with shipping estimated (at the time of writing) at 1-3 business days for the Wi-Fi model and 5-10 business days for the Wi-Fi + Cellular models. That would seem to suggest that the rumours about constrained supply for the smaller retina screens were on the money.
Source: Apple