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Man buys prosthetic hand at Las Vegas pawn shop to return to owner

Posted at 4:02 PM, Jul 10, 2018
and last updated 2018-07-11 11:23:39-04

A high-tech hand recently showed up at a Las Vegas pawn shop and one man is desperate to get it back to its owner.

The Touch Bionics i-Limb hand is not a movie prop, not a toy, but a life-changing device.

"It was marked down as $200, and had collectible on it. It's a hand, it's not a collectible," Reggie Wing said.

Wing was visiting a pawn shop recently, looking for tools, when he stumbled upon the unusual item. 

"I thought about it. That's somebody's hand," he said. "And I asked the girl about it, 'Who's is this? Why did he bring it in here?'"

Wing says employees at the shop told him that a man with a hook for a right hand pawned the device for $50. But when he came back, he didn't have enough cash, and so the item went up for sale.

"And it bothered me that he couldn't get it back out that's his hand," Wing said. 

So he bought the hand to return to the owner but Wing ran into problems. He says the pawn shop, citing confidentiality and store policy, couldn't give the name of the owner and could not hold the item for the owner to retrieve. 

When asked about the hand, Touch Bionics tracked the purchaser to Hanger, Inc., a prosthetics company based in Florida. 

A spokesperson for Hanger, Inc. said the company was unable to track down the owner, leaving the hand and Wing with a big mystery.

Wing hopes to eventually reunite the hand with its owner. If you think you know who the owner is, contact Scripps station KTNV in Las Vegas.