#wizard money

[sweaterbob]

getcho wizard money 💰

Wizard Money T-Shirt

Magic Wizard money.

come shop

[depressed-sugar-baby]

Severus: And what do I get out of this?

Lucius: I will give you a galleon.

Severus:: What do you think I am? A chump? I would never do it for a galleon!

Lucius: How bout two galleons?

Severus: You got yourself a deal.

[ihsnamih]

[lytefoot]

How much money does Harry Potter have?

So I’m trying again to write up chapter 4 of CoS, and I got distracted by the following question.

Just how rich is Harry? Seriously. At this point, I mean--I’m pretty sure that after Sirius leaves him the Black fortune, the answer is “stinking,” but what about with just the Potter money? (I headcanon that Harry has specific feelings about spending the Black money, preferring to do things with it like giving it away in ways that would offend the Blacks as much as possible, and also making sure that some of it goes to Teddy when he comes of age even if Andromeda won’t have it.)

We’re actually given really poor descriptions of the Potter fortune. From the description in PS/SS, vault 713 is room-sized. On the other hand, the Weasley vault in CoS sounds more like a safe (”Mrs. Weasley felt right into the corners” makes more sense in a safe than in a room.) Further, it sounds in CoS like Harry’s vault is the same type (”He tried to block the contents from view” makes more sense if he’s reaching into a safe.)

So I’m going to do two calculations here, bear with me. I’m giving the general details of my math--if you’d like a copy of my spreadsheet, send me a message.

Calculation 1: Conservative Estimate

For this estimate, I’m assuming that Harry has a safe-sized vault, with an interior maybe 80cm/30in to a side. (I did my calculations in metric until almost the end, but I’m including imperial conversions. The conversions aren’t exact, because these are all very approximate numbers.) In PS/SS, we’re told that he has “mounds” of gold galleons--I’m going to neglect the sickles and knuts throughout, because I have the impression that there are substantially fewer of them.

“Mounds” must be at least 3 mounds. In order to have the kind of impression of scale Harry appears to have in his vault, I’m going to estimate that these are about 50cm/20in tall. A “mound” is approximately a cone, and to fit in the vault, they would have a base slightly smaller than their height, say 40cm/16in. If Harry has 3 mounds of galleons, 50cm tall and 40cm diameter at the base, that means he has about 21,000 cm^3 of galleons.

Now, coins have a packing density of about 57%, which means that about 57% of that volume is taken up with actual gold (the rest being gaps between coins), and gold has a density of about 19.32 g/cm^3. So Harry owns about 230 kg of gold galleons.

Let’s pause for a moment and note that’s a heck of a lot of gold. Even if galleons aren’t pure gold (and I think they are, or close). Yeah, Uncle Vernon would have had that off him in a minute if he’d known about it. But, it’s also clear (from the fact that the world economy isn’t in flames) that for some reason wizards don’t just dump gold into the Muggle economy. (My theory can be summed up as: “goblins.”) So anyway. How many galleons is that?

Elsewhere, I’ve posted about how big I think galleons ought to be. I think 1/2 troy ounce of gold makes a nice, comfortable size coin without making the money too stupidly heavy. So with coins that size, Harry’s vault contains about 44,000 galleons. That’s a lot of galleons... but it isn’t enough that he can go around buying dumb stuff like the solid gold cauldron. Could he buy Ron a broom for Christmas and not tell him who bought it? Probably... but the number of Nimbus 2001s he could buy would probably be limited. It’s enough that he’s never going to struggle, but not enough that he wouldn’t have to work a day in his life if he didn’t want to.

(Using my conversion to Muggle money, based on the price of silver, that would be about $580,000 in 1991, or $2.5 million today.)

Calculation 2: Wowsers

That’s not the vault we see in the film adaptation of Sorcerer’s Stone. In the film, we see “mounds” that are slightly taller than Harry (as a small 11-year-old, Harry is about 130cm/50in tall). As far as I can tell (I haven’t watched it in a while, and I’m looking at screen grab), we only see one “mound” that size, along with an assortment of smaller mounds... maybe adding up to two mounds that size. But the vault goes a lot further back. For this calculation, I’m going to say that there might be as many as 5 mounds.

Using the earlier calculation, then, Harry’s mounds of gold would have a volume of 2.9 million cubic centimeters, and contain 32,000 kilograms of gold. (The mounds in the movie look like they’re carefully stacked, which would give them a a packing efficiency of more than 57%, but I'm not finding good numbers for the packing efficiency of coins stacked that way.)

With my galleon sizes, that would give Harry a total of 2 million galleons which is... wowsers. Using my conversion to muggle money (based on the price of silver), that would have been work $27 million in 1991, or $113 million today. That’s pretty stinking rich, right there.

On the other hand, movie galleons are a lot bigger than my 1/2 Troy Ounce galleons. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that each Movie galleon is about 1 1/2 Troy ounces. That still gives Harry 270,000 galleons. If we use JKR’s conversion to Muggle money from the charity books (which I usually don’t, but we’re rolling with the movies), that’s about $2 million. (With my conversion--and not changing the size of my sickle to match the bigger galleons--it’s about $3.5 million in 1991 or $15 million today. If I matched the sickles to the galleons, I’d probably end up with about the same numbers I had in the last paragraph.)

Conclusion: How rich is Harry?

So the answer to the question really depends on which way you want to go with it.

My most conservative estimate to fit the books gives Harry a pretty substantial trust fund and head start on life, but it seems like an amount he could blow through pretty readily if he, say, bought a house in a good location. That’s the kind of wealth that would probably make a 20-something American talk about how nobody ever handed them anything and they had to work for everything they got after their parents paid for their schooling and bought them a condo. Privileged, but not independently wealthy.

On the other hand, if Harry’s vault really looked like it did in the movies, with the piles as gold as big as he was? That’s the kind of fortune that actually can buy solid gold cauldrons on a whim if it likes. It’s still not island-buying money, though. It isn’t billionaire money. But it also doesn’t seem clear that the Wizarding world supports the kind of late-stage capitalism it takes to get billionaires: the financial system doesn’t seem complex enough, for one thing.

[mugglenet]

#ATripThroughDiagonAlley

Gringotts! The Wizard’s Bank! 

Here you can start off your trip by getting all your galleons, sickles and knuts to get all your supplies. Cared for by Goblins, vaults and mysterious magical creatures below. No where safer! 😉

“Enter, stranger, but take heed Of what awaits the sin of greed, For those who take, but do not earn, Must pay most dearly in their turn, So if you seek beneath our floors A treasure that was never yours, Thief, you have been warned, beware Of finding more than treasure there.‘

Like I said, yeh’d be mad ter try an’ rob it,’ said Hagrid.”

- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone/Philosopher’s Stone

[lytefoot]

So for the last 3 hours, I've been doing research and calculations trying to come up with satisfying sizes for wizard coins. There remain some serious problems, but I think all the ones that remain can be solved with either "Magic" or "The literal goblins that control our monetary system won't let that happen.

I'm currently 3d printing the coins (downloaded from thingiverse and resized) to make sure they're physically satisfying.

Galleon: 22.74mm diameter, 4mm thick. A gold coin this size would weigh 1/2 troy ounce (about .55 us ounces).

Sickle: 18.97mm diameter, 3.2mm thick. A silver coin this size would weigh 1/5 troy ounce (about .22 us ounces).

Knut: 14.69mm diameter, 3.2mm thick. A bronze coin this size would weigh 1/10 troy ounce (about .11 us ounces).

Problem 1: commodity exchange

On the commodities market, gold is worth way more than 17 times as much as a similar volume of silver. This used to bother me a lot, but my husband came up with a solution: goblins. You don't own those galleons, wizard, and you don't want to irritate them by selling their gold to muggles. You really don't.

My theory is that the goblins actually exercise a reasonable amount of control over the money supply, holding the volume of currency constant, and handling all money exchange with the muggle world.

Muggles experience inflation, while wizards don't (see above), so a constant exchange rate won't do. Having the exchange rate give galleons their value in gold makes a galleons worth their gold content is No Good: it makes galleons too expensive. Hermione's parents are well-off, but not filthy rich, and they can readily afford all her school supplies, plus provide reasonably generous spending money (she has 10 galleons, which includes her birthday present, before she buys Crookshanks; 5 ounces of gold in 1993 was worth $1955--$3376, adjusted for inflation--a bit much to give your 13-year-old daughter for walking around money).

So my hypothesis is that the muggle exchange rate is indexed to the price of silver. This makes Hermione's 10 galleons worth $153--$264 today--nice pocket money for a 13-year old, but not unreasonable.

This also means that Harry's tri-wizard winnings (in spring 1995) would have converted to about $16,000--about $26,000 today--which is about what the Weasley twins would be asking for in their kickstarter. Nice.

Problem 2: heavy money

This has always been the problem with commodity-based money. It is heavy. Those same tri-wizard winnings weigh about 34 pounds. That's the weight of two gallons of milk, or a reasonable-sized preschooler. Not something you're going to throw around casually.

But this actually a really easy problem to solve with magic? There's no reason that the standard wizard's money pouch shouldn't be sold with a spell to cut the weight.

[justdrarryme]

Just walking down the street...

Husband: hey, we should stop and listen to that busker.

Me: we can't, I don't have any muggle money....do you think he'll take galleons??

Husband: are you fucking kidding me right now?

[oldschoolharrypotter]