To see our recommendations for places to buy Harry Potter wands, follow the links at the bottom of this post!
One part of casting any of the Harry Potter spells that people often overlook is the use of a magic wand. Each of the characters in the book carries a wand that they choose (or that “chooses” them!), and each of the major spells is cast using a wand. While it is theoretically possible for a wizard or witch to cast a spell without a wand (such as the unexplained phenomena that surround the young Harry in the first couple of books), the wand is used to focus the will of the spell-caster, and certain wands even add to the power of the spell.
If you are looking to buy a Harry Potter wand for yourself, or as a present, the first thing that you will discover is that there is quite a wide variety of styles, qualities, and price ranges available. It can be quite confusing, so we’ve done our best to boil the choices down for you, and to explain the differences in wand types.
In the books, the wands are always made of wood, and they usually have a core of some special material such as unicorn hair, phoenix feathers, or dragon heartstring. The wood can be any type of wood such as ash or maple or mahogany. There are many very nice wooden wands available for sale. The thing is that these wands don’t always look like the wands in the movies. When it came time to make the movies, the filmmakers decided to add to the mystery and atmosphere by creating very special looking wands. Many of the wands used in the movies don’t necessarily bear a close resemblance to the wands that are described in the books. As an example, the “Elder Wand” (also known as Dumbledore’s wand) is pictured as a wand that is long and narrow, but which has a series of bumps or knots running down its length. This type of structure is difficult to make out of wood, so these prop wands were made out of a material called resin, which is basically a type of plastic that has been molded to look like it is carved from a piece of wood. The resin allows more flexibility in the design, and it is strong, and once the mold has been made, it is easy to produce many more wands that look exactly alike, whereas a true wooden wand must be carved, which takes more time.
So, the decision comes down to whether you prefer to buy a true wood wand like the ones used in the books, or whether you prefer to go with one of the officially licensed wands that look more like the wands carried by the characters in the movies, but which are not made of wood. Both items can be quite nice, so there’s no wrong choice. To take a look at the best examples of wood wands that we can find, you can’t do better than the ones made by Alivan’s (which appears to be a takeoff on Olivander’s, the wand shop where Harry Potter and Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger buy their wands in the books). Unfortunately, they are only available in the United States, so our US visitors can see the selection by visiting Alivan’s Wands at Amazon. If you want to see the official Harry Potter merchandise wands, US visitors can see them at this link to Amazon, while our visitors from the UK can look at Amazon.co.uk. These wands are produced by the Noble Collection, which makes the nicest, most collectible wands (that are made from resin), and their items normally come with a very stylish looking presentation, as well. The Noble Collection also makes many other cool Harry Potter items such as Hermione Granger’s Time Turner, a Harry Potter writing quill, and many more…all of which can be seen using the links above!
