Linsanity has reached sports-card collectors.
Palo Alto native Jeremy Lin has become a national sensation withthe New York Knicks, and on Thursday, Lin's rookie card sold for$21,580 on eBay (EBAY).
The card featured Lin as a member of the Golden State Warriorsand is autographed by Lin.
The auction for the card received 36 bids before ending Thursdayafternoon.
The seller, Yair Rozmaryn of New York, purchased the card for$1,000 after Lin made his first two starts for the Knicks.
'I figured this could really blow up, so I took a calculatedrisk,' Rozmaryn, a 29-year-old client delivery manager atinformation technology company Mitchell Martin, told Bloomberg News.
Rozmaryn is a Knicks season ticket holder as well as a cardcollector.
This is how he introduced the card for sale on eBay:
'This is the HOLY GRAIL of Jeremy Lin basketball cards! This isLin's Jersey #17/25 and a 2-color patch for his best card in theworld!!! Not to mention.........the card is graded BGS 9.5 GEM MINT!There is NO BETTER Jeremy Lin card than this; a TRUE 1/1Masterpiece! We could someday be comparing this card to the HonusWagner tobacco rookie and other great sports card collector'sitems.'
The buyer, a San Francisco man who Rozmaryn declined to identify,placed the winning bid in the last 10 seconds of the auction andhasn't made further contact, according to the seller.
Rozmaryn said the so-called Linsanity label that the Knicks andnews media have used to describe the player's rush of success had achance to continue and push the card's value higher.
'If the Knicks make a playoff run or somehow make it to achampionship in the next couple years, this is the guy that is goingto be a driving force,' he said in a telephone interview. 'This cardhas a lot of potential to move in the future.'
Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
