Another millionaire watch in Silicon Valley

Just another month or so before LinkedIn employees can begin selling the stock that they had acquired as part of the company's IPO earlier this year. That stock is nearly double the $45-a-share IPO price, so we're talking some serious moolah - more than $8 billion. That has Bay Area Lamborghini dealers ready for an onslaught. From the WSJ:

The lockup countdown became a Silicon Valley tradition during the late-1990s dot-com boom, but the windfalls became a distant memory in recent years as the IPO market dried up. Back then people splurged wildly on homes, cars, second homes, fine furniture--basically any manner of excess. This time people are expecting a slightly more understated buying tone, given how much people were burned last time by the dot-com bust. Since LinkedIn went public, San Francisco-area luxury merchants have been eyeing their calendars for other wealth events, too. In Oakland, Internet music company Pandora Media Inc.'s IPO lockup ends mid-December. Zynga Inc., the San Francisco social-gaming company, has filed to go public, with the big kahuna--Facebook Inc.--expected to follow next year.

By the way, the "60 Minutes" interview with Steve Jobs' biographer Walter Isaacson engages this Silicon Valley wealth and how it changed people. "People thought that they had to start getting rich, so they went out and bought Rolls Royces, they bought homes, their wives got plastic surgery. I saw these people who were these nice simple people turn into these bizarre-o people," Jobs told Isaacson. Jobs himself tried to contain the ostentatiousness.