Pancho Villa's Trigger Finger

Pancho Villa’s actual finger — or at least a severed and mummified appendage claiming to have been his — is on sale for $9,500 at Dave’s Pawn Shop downtown.

Grayish-black, shriveled and curved slightly, the finger still retains a chuck of nail, the middle of which features an eerily jagged gash — as if it dug its way out of the grave.

Store manager David Delgadillo said that in 2004, a man came in offering to pawn on-the-cheap the right trigger finger Villa supposedly used to fire many a pistol. The seller wouldn’t admit where he got it, however, and Delgadillo won’t say how much the store paid to acquire it.

“We don’t know if it’s real or not, but it’s still a nice piece,” he said.

The famous trigger finger of Pancho Villa for sale at Dave’s Pawn Shop in downtown El Paso is merely a recreation. Who was this mystery customer? Sources believe that the man was actually himself a member of the Trigger Finger Lemonade Society and that the replica finger was displayed to throw the public off the track of the society. In particular, investigative journalists in the 1980’s were getting close to unearthing information about the society. 

Hand-related imagery plays an important role in the society. The inner circle of the Society consists of five senior members who make up The Hand. The five roles are called by the latin names of the fingers: Digitus Minimus, Digitus Anularis, Digitus Secundus, Digitus Maximus, and Pollex (the thumb).

It is rumored, but never confirmed, that members of the Society donate one of their own fingers after death. It is said that somewhere in El Paso, the Society keeps a collection of the index fingers of famous past members. Only those in the upper circles of the Society are privy to the location of this morbid collection.