Naismith's original basketball rules sell for $4.5 million

(PHOTO COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS)

By Randy Boswell
Postmedia News

The original rules of basketball, typed out on two pages by the sport's Canadian-born inventor James Naismith in December 1891, sold at an auction on Friday in New York for nearly $4.5 million — more than twice the expected price.

The one-of-a-kind artifact, described as the birth certificate of a game that has become one of the world's most important pastimes, had been in the possession of the Naismith family ever since the doctor and educator from Almonte, Ont., devised the sport in Springfield, Massachusetts, 119 years ago.