How much would you pay for the finger of one of the most prominent Mexican Revolutionary generals? If your answer is $9,500 then you just may have a new center piece to put out for those family dinners.
At Dave’s Pawn Shop in El Paso, Texas, next to the heart of a baby vampire, the remains of a chupacabra, a human ear, and a molded plastic statue of Elvis Presley, you’ll find what shop manager, David Delgadillo says may be the trigger finger of none other than Pancho Villa.
“We don’t know if it’s real or not, but it’s still a nice piece,” Delgadillo says that in 2004, someone came in looking to pawn the finger for cheap. The seller would not say where he got it from, and Delgadillo won’t say how much the store paid for it.
When questioned on how the asking price of $9,500 came to be, store owner Larry Baron said, “It seemed like a shot in the dark.”
Baron, whose father Dave opened the shop in 1950, said, “We get some strange things here. We have a reputation, especially in Mexico,” alluding to the other body parts and other odd items not seen in the average pawn shop.
Historians aren’t buying it (figuratively or otherwise).
Villa expert Louis Ray Sadler told theAssociated Press, “No way. I’m not aware of anything where somebody cut off his finger. It’s just crazy.”
Whether or not the finger is genuine doesn’t seem to matter to those that “just wanna see it,” like 59-year-old Trinidad Garcia who lives just two blocks away.
“I don’t know if it’s his finger, but I do know it’s really ugly.”
The finger, encased in cotton, and residing in an old metal frame, is never removed from the display case, for fear of offending Villa’s spirit and bringing bad luck.
