When I made my signpost replica (back in 1983), I decided to go with the configuration in the final episode. In most of the last season, they only had one board per city. Mine is long since gone.

If you watch the first several scenes of “Goodbye Farewell and Amen”, you can see an entirely different signpost in the begining of the movie that was originally created for the indoor set in season 9. They intended to use it because it was newer and less worn (figuring it would look nicer in close-ups). The lettering didn’t look as interesting as the older signpost or quite match the original… in fact, coney island was even cut differently. the older one was relegated to the ranch location for the outdoor shots. They swapped them for the last episode. That newer signpost was destroyed, along with the rest of the original ranch set in a wild fire that occured during filming. They were forced (to my delight) to use the older, more familiar signpost for most of the movie. when you see the last scene of everyone running up to “take their hometown home”, the signs are very worn, with many nail holes and flaws from all the reconfiguring of the boards. It looks a lot more authentically real and makes the scene work better (in my opinion). It’s a good thing they had a spare!

When the series went off the air, set decorater Bert Allen gained possesion of the original signpost used in the production of M*A*S*H. The Smithsonian Institute then wanted many of the props and set pieces for display as iconic articles of television and pop culture history. Producers had a replica made up to donate, as the original was unavailable. Although they claim it is a set piece, it is clearly not authentic in many ways, and some of the signs don’t even look close to the originals (check out Boston, Seoul and Coney Island for example). This was proven when in 2004, the “Profiles in History” auction had the original M*A*S*H signpost from Bert Allen up for bid. Despite it’s poor conition, it fetched approx. $24,000!

To this day, I am still considering recreating another M*A*S*H signpost. Thanks to the pictures and information in the Profiles in History auction, and the Box set of DVDs, I could make it even better than the one once on display in the Smithsonian!