A couple of months ago, I decided to buy a wand. A Harry Potter wand.
As you may know, there are many, many MANY wands available, and I spent far more time than I care to admit staring at wands on the internet, eventually settling on Parvati Patil’s one. I’m not a particular fan of Parvati’s, but I liked how her wand looked, and by that time, I was just kinda fed up staring at wands and went with that one.
Of course, since then, I have accumulated several other wands, and a book about wands, so let’s talk about wands.
(If anyone wonders, that small tote is by Geek Gear).
I will continue to update this post whenever I (or Bert) acquire a new wand, so if you're into wands, check back regularly!
I feel like the easiest way to go about this, is to do a book review and talk about the character wands as I go.
The Wand Collection, one of the Insight Edition books, focusses solely on the wooden movie prop wands from the Harry Potter movies.
None of the the wands you’ll see in this book are the wands you can find made by brands such as The Noble Collection, Cine Replicas, WOW Stuff etc, as neither of these are wooden.
There are some wand makers around that make replica wands out of wood, but you’ll have to do your own research into those as I’m not sure who to recommend, other than maybe Wizarding Lifestyle (I'm not sure if he makes actual movie replicas either but it's worth the ask).
What I do want to say about the book is that it’s cool to see all the different wands in wood. However, I would have preferred they had photographed them on cream or light brown pages, rather than black. I feel that the black is too overwhelming for the, often dark, wood of the wands.
I do like all the little texts that go with the wands though.
And also that with some wand pages, you see both the character's original wand and the one they got afterwards.
It doesn’t include all the wands by all the movie characters, and it doesn’t cover any of the Fantastic Beasts ones either. I suspect that once all Fantastastic Beasts movies have been released they’ll release a separate book for those.
The book is also not very good quality. I have read it once, and then only opened it up another time to take photos of pages with wands. And then a 3rd time to update this post with Xenophilius Lovegood's wand and take a photo and the spine cracked. The pages haven't started falling out, but as you can see from that photo, there's a big ugly white strip visible between both pages. So the binding quality is actually pretty bad. I'm not sure if this is the case on all their paperback copies, or if I have had bad luck, but I did want to mention it.
I feel that this is a fun book, but also a kind of take it or leave it kind of book (especially seeing the bad quality binding on mine). I’m glad that I own it, but in hind sight, I wouldn’t have been upset if I hadn’t owned it either. It was a bit of an impulse buy and I think I probably would have been better off spending my money on another book, even though this one is fun to leaf through.
Now that we have that out of the way, to the wands!
First up: Rubeus Hagrid’s wandbrella!
Verdict is still out on whether or not this actually a full-fledged umbrella, I have heard people say it is, and others that it isn’t.
I do really like it, even though it is a little cumbersome to just carry around. That’s why I got this parasol holder on etsy (which yes, I do use with regular umbrellasols [good for rain and sunny as they say in Japan] thank you very much!).
I originally put off buying this because I already own a pink umbrella, which I hardly ever use. But I do love Hagrid and his ridiculous pink wandbrella, so clearly, I caved.
Whilst I do have the Golden Trio wands in my house, they’re not all mine, and they’re not all replicas by The Noble Collection.
My Harry Potter one is a full length pen one by Cine Replicas. It’s made of plastic, and as you can see, much more golden than Harry’s wand normally is. Which I actually like.
I also have a normal pen wand version, but mine is a €2 one from Primark. I didn’t feel like spending nearly €10 on one so the cheapo Primark one suits me fine. Especially as Joop loves to play with it.
I’m not sure who the Ollivander’s wand tin is by, I got it online, it’s very practical.
Update: November 3 2020
Recently Primark released a levitating wand pen version of their Harry Potter wand pen. It's by a company called Blue Sky Studios. Frankly the wand is very plastic, but at €7 (which is still cheaper than a regular Noble Collection wand pen!) and with a pretty box, I found it to be a nice display piece for my studio :).
/end update
All Hermione Granger wands are Bert’s. One is a pen wand, also from Cine Replicas, and the second is a plastic mystery wand series 1 one (I'm not sure who makes these). It was really quite lucky he drew Hermione’s wand.
As you can see the pen wand is of much better quality than the mystery box one. The mystery box one is a regular PVC wand I would say, whilst the pen wand is a little more geared towards being a better class of plastic wand.
I especially like them because I think they could be practical at conventions, but at the same time, they’re not that well balanced to write with, so I’m not sure which wand I would take. Especially not because I have a wand holster.
UPDATE November 3 2020
On Halloween Bert and I went to Liège, and obviously we visited Les 4 Maisons. Considering he has an entire shelf in the big display case dedicated to Hermione and Gringotts things, I figured I'd get him Hermione's wand, in the fancy Ollivander's display box. Now please note that the character wand, and the window box wand are all the exact same wand. You're basically paying extra for packaging, and if you don't care for that, there's no need to get a fancy box. I personally avoid it if possible, but as this is an actual display item, it made sense to pay more for the really lovely box.
/end update
Ron Weasley’s wand is the only one from the 3 that is an actual The Noble
Collection replica wand. I like that it’s compact and sturdy. It’s far from my favourite wand, but its definitely very practical if I am taking photos in the woods and don’t want to take a wand that is rather more fragile. Were there other options, yes, but there you go.
Last of my Harry Potter wands is Parvati Patil’s. Which has bits broken off. I have no idea how it happens, Bert thinks it must have happened when we shot the Quaffle Waffles photo and it got damaged sitting in my bracer. One day I will drybrush it with acrylics so it’s less noticeably damaged.
But yeah, beware when you get this wand, it’s very much a display only wand as it’s quite fragile.
Aside from some Harry Potter wands between Bert and I, I also own 4 Fantastic Beasts wands.
For starters both Scamander brothers’ wands.
Whilst my Theseus Scamander wand is a The Noble Collection replica.
The Newt Scamander one is a WOW Stuff light painter wand. I have been tempted to also buy this in The Noble Collection replica, but truth is that they are so similar to each other it seems like a gross waste of money to do so. But yeah, the Newt wand is absolutely one of my favourite wands. Probably second only to my Metallum wand, but more about that one, anon.
Talking Fantastic Beasts, I could of course not resist Queenie Goldstein’s wand, as I just love the art deco elements of the wand. It’s absolutely beautiful, but I wouldn’t take it out and about with me I don’t think, I’d be too terrified to break it.
Another wand that is quite fragile, but beautiful, is that of the immortal alchemist Nicolas Flamel. I was doubting between this one and the Gregorovich one, which have a very similar shape, but in the end I went with Flamel’s.
Because let’s face it, Flamel is rather more loveable than Gregorovich, and this wand is more beautiful, too.
And last but not least in my small wand collection is the Metallum wand by Geek Gear. Which looks metallic, as the name suggests. It can be a bit tricky to photograph because of the metal sheen to it, which depending on the light, shows up rosegold to bronze.
What I like most about this wand is that it spirals, making it look much more like a wand than a lot of others. With most wands, the handle, which is the most aesthetic part of the wand, is hidden up in your hand, and all you see is basically a stick, this is much less the case with this one.
I might actually also buy Xenophelius Lovegood’s wand because it is a “wooden” version of essentially the same design.
As you can see, the Geek Gear wands don’t come in a box as nice as those by The Noble Collection. It’s just functional, and tends to get beat up in the mail (mine did at least). I only have one wand by them so I don’t dare to speak about the overall quality, but the Metallum wand definitely is as good as a The Noble Collection one. It wasn't cheaper though, because of shipping.
Shipping isn't the ony thing you should take into account when it comes to Geek Gear, their customer service is absolute SHITE. It took over a month and half to send this, IF they bothered to answer to a message (I had most "luck" emailing and still most of my messages were ignored) it was always vague and never actually helpful, and once it was downright lies. So yeah, I don't actually recommend the company. I know I'm not the only one that has had bad experiences with their customer service, but there are people that speak very highly of them, so it might be hit or miss. Just writing down my experience though, I'm not happen with them when it comes to customer service. In all honesty though, the quality of the products is really good.
Ladies tees run very small though, so make sure to size up!
As you can see, Joop, Destroyer of Worlds, also really digs my wand.
Update: November 3 2020
Well, I bought the Xenophilius Lovegood wand on that Halloween visit to Les 4 Maisons. And that's why it's not with the other wands by The Noble Collection. I really rather like it. It's taller and chunkier (not by much) than the other wands I own, but the design has a really nice effect. Its definitely a more original design, especially with the little symbols carved into it. For sure one of my favourites!
As you can see in the photo with The Wand Collection, here's the cracked pages I was talking about in the review section of the book near the beginning of the post.
/end update
You may wonder how I store my wands. Whilst Bert’s Hermione wands and the wandbrella all live in our big display case, the other wands are in a four wand display wall box by The Noble Collection. They also come in a larger one for 10 wands (if I’m not mistaken on the number) but I don’t really have the space for one of those. Well I could rearrange things and make the space, but for now, 2 for 4 wands each suits me just fine.
And that’s it for my small wand collection.
I hope it’s helped someone pick out a wand for themselves, or decide whether or not they really want The Wand Collection on their bookshelves.
If you are looking to get a wand from a small shop creator, Spellbound Steph has a really good list in which you can find loads of them. It’s a living document, meaning it is constantly getting adapted to new information, so make sure to check it regularly.
Finally, I would like to say this. I do NOT stand with all the terf nonsense JK Rowling has been spouting all over the internet. As far as I’m concerned trans women are women and trans men are men and non-binary people are valid human beings. That said, however, I get a lot of joy from the Wizarding World, and just like many, I haven’t been doing well lately. I refuse to let her take that joy away from me, I don’t need more sadness and loss in my life as is. I hope you can understand my point of view.
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