Dark Knight III #1
1:5,000 Retailer Incentive
Jim Lee 5K Edition Signed & Sketched

DC Comics, January 2016.

The Dark Knight rises again to face the dawn of the master race with a massive number of variants "And, for the first time ever, DC will offer custom store variant editions to qualifying retailers".

This is the 1 in 5,000 (!) retailer incentive variant featuring different cover art from the other variants and has a blank section in the middle for a unique sketch by Jim Lee.

When the ratio was announced, it seems that Marvel decided to parody it and produced a 1 in 4,999 retailer incentive variant of Star Wars: Vader Down that made it to retailers first.

For the 1:5000, the sketches weren't available until 2016 but there was one previous pre-sale on ebay from Beyond Comics (gaithersburgcomics) and that unseen copy appears to have sold for $7,000 (!) at the end of November 2015.

The finished variants started appearing on web and auction sites in mid January 2016, with sellers initially looking for between $3,500 and $7,000 but a couple more appeared with lower starting prices and one seemingly sold for $2999.99 that same week. Later in the month a CGC 9.8 s/s copy appeared on ebay (for over $7k) and a second appeared later for $6k.

Below are a some of the completed sketches by Lee:

Apparently DC sent five of the sketches and signature copies direct to CGC and each of those were authenticated on CGC Signature Series (all graded 9.8). CGC have noted the variant as "Jim Lee 5K Edition" and the label text reads "SIGNED AND SKETCHED BY JIM LEE ON 1/11/16". Others sent in will, unfortunately, get the Qualified grade (as these are not from trusted sources in the eyes of CGC) so will get a variation of "NAME & SKETCH WRITTEN ON COVER IN PENCIL & MARKER" in the label text but these are equally as good as the authenticated copies given there are no known rogue copies of the 5k Edition. The sketch edition below was one of the original set of 12 posted on Jim Lee's facebook:

This will be a one to watch and this page will be updated once more of these come to market, more are sold and more are slabbed.