Vintage 1997 NFL Fingernail Tattoos New England Patriots 🏈 It's Football Season!!!

Fingernail Tattoos for Patriots Fans? ⚡ The Flying Elvis, Sized for a Fingernail

Size: 2 1/2" x 2 1/2"

Patriots fans in the late 1990s had their own way of showing colors before kickoff, right down to the fingertips. These cards have sat sealed since they left the factory — never pressed onto a nail, still carrying the exact silver-and-red logo the team wore through the Parcells-to-Carroll turnover.

🃏 What's Actually on the Card

Ten minuteman-head tattoos fill the cream sheet — a gray face under a navy tricorn hat, white star, red-and-white streaks trailing behind — eight small and two larger, printed mirror-image so they read correctly once pressed face-down and transferred, the same way any water-slide decal works. The header card above carries the NFL shield over a stadium scene, the five-point pitch (Easy to apply, Easy to remove, Waterproof, Lasts for days, Safe & non-toxic), FINGERNAIL TATTOOS in bold yellow, and MADE IN TAIWAN. Flip it over for four application steps drawn with a Pittsburgh Steelers logo as the example — Play-By-Play's shared back across every team in the line, not a Patriots misprint — and DISTRIBUTED BY Play-By-Play TOYS & NOVELTIES, SAN ANTONIO, TX 78218-0267. These come to us as a stack, and the card photographed here is a fair sample of the batch — expect the same clean, never-applied condition throughout, with most running as nice or nicer than what's pictured.

🏈 The Flying Elvis, and 1997's Coaching Turnover

That minuteman is the "Flying Elvis" — the silver patriot in a blue hat with a white star and red stripes that the team adopted in 1993, worked out through NFL Properties, the same licensing arm printed on this card. Owner James Orthwein, an advertising man by trade, said at the time that "merchandising is no longer just a local situation" — and fans immediately nicknamed the new mark Elvis, the Old Man of the Mountain, and Darth Vader, depending who you asked. By 1997 it had been the team's logo for four years, through a wrenching offseason: after New England lost Super Bowl XXXI to Green Bay that January, head coach Bill Parcells resigned — "If they want you to cook the dinner, at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries" — and left for the Jets, taking Bill Belichick with him. Pete Carroll took over and had a strong first year anyway: 10-6, AFC East champions out of Foxboro Stadium, beating Miami 17-3 in the Wild Card round before losing 7-6 at Pittsburgh. It was the franchise's last division title before Bill Belichick and Tom Brady arrived. Tackle Bruce Armstrong, quarterback Drew Bledsoe, tight end Ben Coates, linebacker Chris Slade and special-teamer Larry Whigham all made the Pro Bowl that season.

🎪 Play-By-Play, San Antonio

The distributor named on the back has its own story. Arturo Torres left Cuba for the United States in 1961 and started out washing dishes at a Texas Pizza Hut; by the 1980s he was running 240 Pizza Hut and Taco Bell locations, which he sold for $125 million in 1992. He put that money into Play-By-Play, turning a vending-machine prize business into the country's biggest supplier to carnivals and theme parks — something close to half that market by 1998 — run out of a warehouse on Tejasco Street in San Antonio, the same city printed on this card. The run didn't last past 2001: Play-By-Play fell off the Nasdaq, Torres resigned as chairman that June, and the company stopped filing with the SEC that September. A European branch kept the Play-By-Play name going out of Valencia, Spain, and still makes plush toys today.

⚡ I love football enough that I might wear a few of these myself before kickoff — my daughter would get a kick out of it too. I won't tell you who my team is, only that it's one of these tattoos, and I might end up with them on my forehead come game day. Hopefully we see your team in the Super Bowl. Go Patriots!!!