Fantastic beasts — where to find them

The new £10,000 coin shows two lions, a griffin, a falcon, a bull, a greyhound, a dragon, a unicorn, a horse and a yale. What — you don't know what a yale is?

In the underworld €500 notes are known as Bin Ladens because they make the movement of large sums of money convenient and are favoured by ne'er-do-wells. The new £10,000 coin would be useless for that. It’s the size of a plate and weighs a stone and a half. Also there’s only one of them so you’d be quite conspicuous if you tried to launder it. It would buy you a lot of parking, though, if you could find a parking meter big enough. And, as with those commemorative £5, £20, £50 and £100 coins, as well as the £5,000 one minted last year, it is legal tender.

But you'd be foolish to spend those coins. A Winnie-the-Pooh 50p is worth £10, according to the Royal Mint. It probably has to be in the unopened original packet, though, not fished out of the bottom of your slummy jar.

Anyway: look at those lovely animals on the 10-grand coin. Ten of them, a compendium of creatures that would make Newt Scamander reach for his Tardis-style suitcase. It is a thing of beauty — I love the way some of the paws break out into the inscription. We're told it took 16½ days to make, of which four days was polishing.

Jody Clark, whom we feel obliged to call the master of coin, is the engraver responsible for the whole Queen's Beasts series, which started in 2016 with a £5 coin featuring the Lion of England. The beasts are plaster statues representing, through the medium of heraldry, the Queen's genealogy. They were cast for her coronation and now live in Canada; Portland stone replicas stand at Kew Gardens.

Clark said of the statues: "They are very stylised and look imposing as statues, but the challenge was to capture this on the surface of a coin. When it came to areas like the eyes, I kept them blank. Adding too much detail softened the look, and I think this way there is still a sense of sculpture reflecting the originals.”

He added: “I’ve always been interested in fantastic beasts; you can ask my mum! I think most children love fairy tales and stories about lions, dragons and unicorns; they’ve got a timeless appeal.” Perhaps Jody is not a Muggle at all but Newt in disguise.

If you want to know more about minting coins, try this excellent, well-illustrated Wired article.

Oh, a yale is a sort of goaty, rammy thing with swivelling horns. Apparently.