It was with some surprise that I noticed Harry Potter coins appearing from just about everywhere. It’s a popular franchise as we know, but one that has been fairly quiet over the last couple of years, with just the occasional Fantastic Beasts’ film keeping it alive. So what’s been going on? No idea! We felt it was time to get a grip on what is out there and from where, given the obvious popularity of it, but it turned into a far bigger task than originally envisaged, with well over 125 coins so far and more to come over the next few months.

The selection is very varied, from 0.333 silver coins carrying a price tag of just 12 Euros, right up to MDM’s spectacular silver Hogwarts’s kilo at over twenty times that price. There are dimensional coins, rectangular coins, minigolds, and Chibi, of course. The guide just covers gold and silver, as we always do here, but there are plenty of very cheap base-metal coins also out there (MDM have loads, for example), as well as medals and pins (Monnaie de Paris). No platinum yet.

This guide is set over three pages, with MDM hogging page 3 to itself, the Monnaie de Paris and the Crown Mint on page 2, and the New Zealand Mint (rebranded Agoro from August 2024), CIT, and the Mint of Poland here on the first page. Everything is colour coded, and with our recent refresh, looks pretty good, I think. We’ll keep this updated (keep an eye on the changelog) and hope that it gives you an idea of just how important the media licenced coins are these days, so even if you’re not a fan, understand they bring in lots of new collectors to our hobby, and should be recognised for that. Enjoy.

NOTE: One range not shown here is Agoro’s (NZ Mint) Harry Potter Trading Coin series of 51 coins. This guide is already far larger than I expected, so adding another 50+ images wouldn’t help matters, but they do have their own profile, which can be looked at HERE, along with the other offerings in that range.

One-ounce rectangular silver coins with an image of an official movie poster. These posters are a core component of the memorabilia market, so quite an inspired idea, given they show the subject off at their best and are rooted in the styles of their time. SERIES ENDED

Magical Creatures showcases some of the fantastic creatures that populate the Wizarding Universe. They’re depicted framed by what looks to be a window in Hogwarts School, with a colourised background, and they’re adorned with three inset coloured cubic zirconia stones. SERIES ENDED.

Also using the rectangular format popularised by their film poster reproduction coins, This series looks at each character Patronus, which is shown in glowing form. Interesting art style. SERIES ENDED.

The NZ Mint has taken a clever approach to the licence with a beautifully artistic set of four, five-gram silver foils that feature the heraldry of the four main houses of magic at the famous Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Despite weighing so little, they’re an expansive 148 x 98 mm in size, which is absolutely huge compared to a standard coin at 40mm in diameter, despite that coin weighing over six times as much.

Each of the four designs in packed with colourful imagery and must surely be appealing to fans of the books and movies. These are fully denominated in NZ Dollars, and the common obverse carries the effigy of Queen Elizabeth II and a repeating background pattern of mint logos. Packaging is equally impressive, with a neat frame making the display of each piece very easy. The outer shipper is equally well done. MORE. SERIES ENDED

The Hogwart’s crests series are shaped coins with selective colouring on the reverse face. SERIES ENDED.

A phenomenon that has travelled far from its Japanese homeland, Chibi (ちび or チビ) is slang for ‘short’ and is applied to various pop culture genres today. Chief amongst those are the small, chubby caricatures with their tiny bodies and over-sized heads – also called super-deformed (SD). A popular style in anime and manga, and also with the Funko figures that are seemingly everywhere these days, we’re actually surprised the concept has taken this long to hit the numismatic world.

Each shaped coin has a standard obverse design. The usual Ian Rank Broadley effigy of Queen Elizabeth II and the surrounding inscriptions marking this out as a Niue issue. The presentation is also as neat as you would expect from a mint known for the quality of it, the box allowing for easy display and heavily themed for each issue. Each is a 1oz fine silver coin with a mintage of 2,000 pieces. MORE. SERIES ENDED.

The purest series from the NZ Mint, it consists of cleanly struck gold and silver coins and is likely considered their flagship range. The two larger coins carry identical designs, but like a few of the Star Wars issues, the small gold coin is sometimes modified slightly. In this case, the difference is very small, limited to just a mild cropping, thus enlarging to allow a better use of the smaller canvas. You can see it above.

Each coin is well presented in a quality wooden box, with a seralised Certificate of Authenticity, all wrapped up in a neatly themed shipper. It’s hard to fault this mint for its packaging, which is almost universally well realised and quite restrained.

Similar to the standard Classic range, these are antique-finished, and instead of gold, are available in a three-ounce silver format as well. So far, it appears the series will focus on places, rather than the characters, which is a good change. SERIES ENDED.

There’s been a tradition at this mint for issuing both Disney and Star Wars Christmas holiday coins, and for 2021 they’ve added Harry Potter to the selection. Of particular note is the excellent presentation, including a capsule with a ribbon that allows hanging from a tree or elsewhere.

The Fantastic Beasts sub-set of Chibi follows exactly the same ethos as all the others, including the more numerous Harry Potter coins. At the time of publication, just two characters have been released, but we’d expect that to change when the next movie finally arrives. MORE. SERIES ENDED.

One of the key elements of the Harry Potter movies was the governing body that kept magic in check. In the US, this task is undertaken by the Magical Council of the United States of America (MACUSA), and it’s the logo/seal of this organisation that forms the basis for this coins design. The logo is a cool one, very USA, and CIT have used smartminting to knock it out of the park.

Issued for the Cook Islands, the one-ounce proof finish coin comes in a cubed box with a clear window on top and some lavish finishing. The Certificate of Authenticity is serialised and printed directly on the box. As with pretty much all of these CIT coins, they’re struck by the masters at German mint, BH Mayer. MORE.

Like all the coins in this series, a window of crystal (agate?), in this case a quite garish pink, is integrated into the design, with the reverse picturing the castle exterior, and the obverse the castle interior. This series has always been rooted in real locations, so this was quite a departure and well before Harry Potter started to appear on coins with the regularity it has today. The coin comes boxed and with a coloured shipper. MORE.