Here's something I'm betting none of us ever knew - the dog tags and the boots Alan Alda wore in the long running TV series M*A*S*H were the real thing. The tags belonged to two soldiers who were in the army during WWII and they weren't just props. The boots had originally been worn by another trooper and Alda donned them in each and every episode. 

They were the only souvenirs he kept after the show ended, and now he's put them up for auction, with the money going to a good cause - a centre for the advancement of science. 

"I put these boots on every day that we shot MASH, for eleven years. And the dog tags, too. And every time my foot found its way into one of the boots, or the necklace of tags went over my head, I remembered: Someone had worn these once in a real war."

"Thinking about these men wasn't some kind of acting exercise. They were on my mind because I was literally in their shoes and wearing the metal tags stamped with the minimal words and numbers that served as their identity. When I laced up the boots, I thought about the guy who had worn them before me, and what he might have had to go through, compared to their present occupier."

As of this posting, the tags and footwear have a bid of $21,000 U.S. The story behind these artifacts is pretty interesting and can be found at the link below.

https://clearthis.page/?u=https://www.military.com/off-duty/television/2023/07/07/why-alan-alda-auctioning-his-mash-dog-tags-and-boots-after-40-years.html

You can check out the auction site, the latest bid and the other showbiz artifacts on the block here.