Wands with a core of centaur tail hairs are excellent for the use of Divination, Astronomy, and Astronomy Divination (the use of stars and planetary bodies in an attempt to predict the future). Ravenclaws will find wands with this core to be particularly powerful for them. These wands are not very fast to cast spells, but they perform quite powerful ones, much like the centaurs from whom they were taken. They do not like to fight, and are slow to do so, but when they do, they are excellent fighters, though they are stereotypically aloof, intelligence, wise, and more likely to watch things happen than to actually take action.

Wands with a chimera scale fragment core are rare not for concerns of safety (these wands are generally no more stubborn than those with the feathers of a hippogriff, and far more stable then those made with the core of an Erumpet hide). The reason that they are so rare is that they are so difficult to kill, and so few are willing to attempt (to place this into perspective, there are more recorded slayings of basilisks in the past fifty years than chimera slayings in all of recorded history). The most recent slaying of a chimera was in Greece over two thousand years ago, so the scales that were harvested are now degraded, broken, or dispersed across the globe. Wands with this core are typically found as heirloom cores, and those are not a full chimera scale. Generally, a more common core (frequently the heartstring of a dragon) is used, with a fragment of the scale placed into the common core. These wands are more common around the Mediterranean (mostly in Greece and the Balkans), though they are found throughout Europe. The raw power of these wands are what makes them so desired, they are hard to master (meaning more powerful spells) and are good for all kinds of magic, though they are best suited to offensive magic. The downside is that they are very difficult to control.

Wands with cores from the hairs of a demiguise were not thought to have enough power to make a proper wand for a very long time, but when it was discovered that more than one core could be used, they grew more favorable due to their strength in the subtle arts and Transfiguration (the demiguise is a large ape-like creature with long, silvery hairs that can turn invisible when threatened- their hairs are used to make Invisibility Cloaks- so it makes sense). With only a demiguise hair core, these wands can only really be used for Transfiguration, and impede on any other type of magic, but with other cores they can be quite powerful wands. Though they are nearly equal among the four Houses, they are slightly more rare with the Hufflepuffs.

Wands with doxy hair or wings as a core are highly talented with the Dark Arts (second only to basilisk skin cores), and are rather unmanageable and mean in spirit. These wands are most often found in Slytherin families who cannot obtain a wand with a basilisk core. Much like the basilisk wands, wands with doxy hair or wings are quite powerful, prestigious, unpredictable, and temperamental.

Wands with cores of erkling fang became common in Germany as part of an attempt to control the populations of the elf-like creatures. They have are good for the Dark Arts, hexes, and jinxes.While they are not particularly powerful in any one area of magic, they make up for it with the speed at which they cast spells.

Wands with erumpent hide cores are rare for a reason. The hides of these animals do not take well to high levels of magic, or sharp impacts. When added to a more gentle core (such as unicorn tail hair), they may add a little something to the spells cast. Most wandmakers will blatantly refuse to work with this material, because of the dangers an erumpent hide poses to both the maker of the wand, and the one who possesses such a wand.