POPSUGAR

Harry Potter Was So Rich, It's Knuts!

Oct 8 2016 - 5:00am

It's true, Harry Potter [1] had his share of issues. Like, you know, growing up dealing with the Dursleys, his constant near-death experiences at Hogwarts, a target on his back from the greatest Dark Lord of all time, and, well, pretty much the weight of the wizarding world on his shoulders since birth. If it was any consolation . . . Harry Potter was loaded. A Reddit thread [2] recently broke down the exchange rate between muggle money and wizard gold, and based on the findings, we learned: Harry, the high-rolling boy wizard, could have been wiping his tears of anguish with all the galleons stored in his Gringotts vault, the Weasleys were truly struggling to make ends meet, and the cost of butterbeer is quite reasonable.

Now, JK Rowling has never revealed Harry's net worth, but this thread does a pretty spectacular job of outlining what things would have cost in the wizarding world in relation to what us muggles would be throwing down. By using some basic math and loads of Harry Potter logic, here's an overview of what the cost of living looked like.

In Sorcerer's Stone, Hagrid tells Harry the exchange rates, which are:

17 sickles = 1 galleon
29 knuts = 1 sickle
493 knuts = 1 galleon

Reddit user aubieismyhomie [3] noted that "most products in the Wizarding World can't translate, but a few products in the books are also Muggle products," so she tried to use what she did know to approximate the value of them compared to US currency and found, based on these amounts, the approximated values for the conversion from wizarding money to USD.

Galleon = About $25
Sickles = About $1.50
Knuts = About $0.05

Wands are actually pretty cheap.

"At seven galleons, Harry paid approximately $175 for his wand. Considering the extraordinary power it gives wizards, this was lower than I expected, when things like Omnioculars, Brain Elixir, Metamorph Medals, and a potions book were more expensive . . . not to mention that Bagman was willing to give Fred and George five galleons for a fake one," says aubieismyhomie [4]. Hmmm, interesting . . .

Harry was super rich and had NO problems sharing.

"At the World Cup, he spent $750 to buy he, Ron, and Hermione Omnioculars as Christmas presents (for about 10 years, mind)," says aubieismyhomie [5]. "Not only that, but he gave Fred and George $25,000 of Triwizard Tournament winnings to start their joke shop because he didn't need it."

The Weasleys experienced pretty severe poverty.

"In Chamber of Secrets, the Weasleys completely emptied their vault which consisted of one galleon and a pile of sickles, which could be equated from $50 to $75, and they had to buy everyone books, plus robes, a wand and cauldron for Ginny, etc. It didn't really hit me until now just how hard the 50 galleon fine for the Flying Ford Anglia hit the family.

"Also, it made it that more surprising to me that when they win the 700 galleon Daily Prophet Grand Prize, they spend the better part of $17,500 on a trip to Egypt (I suspect that a good chunk of it may have been spent getting out of debt, but they didn't tell any of the children). Finally, it meant Fred and George's 37 galleon bet with Bagman was over a thousand dollars on something of a longshot."

Dobby made a pretty solid income after he was freed.

"Dobby makes a galleon/week, so about $25/week," says aubieismyhomie [6]. "This was all that he wanted, as Dobby was offered ten times that by Dumbledore. He offered Dobby ten galleons/week with weekends off. This equates to $250/week, which is pretty good because the House Elves have essentially no living expenses that we saw."

Not bad, but we're pretty sure Hermione would have something to say about it. It doesn't sound like they are getting free health care, after all . . .

Butterbeer is pretty reasonably priced, too.

Based on this model, butterbeer would be about $3 a glass. Cheers to THAT.

The Ministry was willing to pay 10 times more for Harry's capture than for Sirius Black's.

According to the thread, the Ministry of Magic was willing to pay a whopping $2.5 million to capture Harry when he was labeled as Undesirable No. 1.


Source URL
https://www.popsugar.com/money/Harry-Potter-Net-Worth-40211311