Money in Harry Potter
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In the Harry Potter series of novels by J. K. Rowling, a fictional system of currency is used by the wizards of the United Kingdom. It is based on three types of coin. In order of decreasing value, they are: the gold Galleon, the silver Sickle, and the bronze Knut. 29 Knuts are worth 1 Sickle and 17 Sickles (or 493 Knuts) are worth 1 Galleon. Wizarding banks provide moneychanging services for those with Muggle (ordinary) cash.
According to the character Hagrid in the first novel, this system is "easy enough" to understand, although it is based on rather peculiar proportions. Given the author's tendency to use subtle satire in her books, it is possible that wizarding currency is a parody of the British monetary system before it was decimalised.
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Estimates of worth
There are no definite facts about the worth of wizarding money in Muggle terms. It is quite possible that the author has not thought this out in detail, or that the significantly different social structure (including the lack of mass production) of wizardkind may mean significantly different prices for the similar items in the Muggle and wizarding worlds.
However, in the book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, two pieces of information are given which hint at how much wizards' currency is worth in comparison to real-world money. Firstly, it is said that £174 million raised for charity is equivalent to 34,000,872 Galleons + 14 Sickles + 7 Knuts. It is also stated that the book costs £2.50, or 14 Sickles + 3 Knuts.
The first piece of information suggests that 1 Galleon is worth around £5.12, but according to the second figure 1 Galleon is approximately £3.01. It is implied that the first piece of information is an exact conversion, but the second figure may not be exact (perhaps wizards have to pay more for the book than Muggles, who benefit from mechanised printing and population-induced economies of scale): hence, it may be sensible to assume that the first figure is correct.
Thus:
- 1 Galleon is worth about £5.12
- 1 Sickle is worth slightly more than 30 pence (30.103...)
- 1 Knut is worth slightly more than 1 penny (1.038...)
Harry pays 7 Galleons for his magic wand. This is equivalent to about £36 (roughly 65 US dollars or 55 Euro according to conversion rates in June 2005), which would put it on a par with some of the more expensive merchandise wands sold.
A currency converter was produced by CNN in 2001, which assumed that money in the Harry Potter world was worth less than the figures established in this article. It used the figure that $3.99 (the price of the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them book in US dollars) = 14 Sickles + 3 Knuts.
If a Galleon is indeed worth about five British pounds, then we may be sure that it is not made from real gold (unless wizards have access to large amounts of very cheap gold). The price of an ounce of gold is currently about US$425 (£225) per troy ounce. In fact, because an ounce of silver is worth about $7 (£3.70), it's more likely that the Galleon is actually silver, and only coloured gold (by either magic or cladding).
Because there are apparently no banknotes in the wizard world, and because the coins apparently come in just the three different values, wizard money would be expected to be quite cumbersome to count out. It is debatable why wizards (or the Gringotts goblins) do not introduce intermediate value coins (such as 5-Sickle, 5-Knut, and 15-Knut).
Banks
The only reference to a bank in Harry Potter is Gringotts, which is located on Diagon Alley in London. Hagrid indicates that wizards have "just the one" bank.
There is a possiblity of other Gringotts banks in the world, most notably in Egypt, where Ron's older brother, Bill, worked prior to his attempt to get a transfer to the London branch.
Coin design and specifications
On every Galleon there is a serial number referring to the goblin who cast it. In Order of the Phoenix, Hermione bewitched fake Galleons to show the time and date of the next DA (Dumbeldore's Army) meeting instead of the serial number.
Although the coins used in the film are round, the books might have had other designs for them. In one scene, when Harry gets a heptagonal (seven-sided) fifty-pence piece for Christmas, Ron exclaims how odd the shape of the coin is, and if he could have it for this very reason, thus giving rise to the idea that the types of coins (galleons, sickles, and knuts) are actually named for their shape, that of a boat, a sickle, and a nut (as in nuts and bolts, not peanuts). Early toys released before the films came out also give rise to this idea: one of the toys had plastic knuts in it, shaped hexagonally with a star cut out in the centre.
Likewise, we are not told anything in particular about the size or weight of the coins, although in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire a Muggle complains that someone tried to pay him with "gold coins the size of hubcaps". Gold coins of this size would not only weigh a great deal, but be worth far more than any of the suggested exchange rates for a Galleon (the largest British gold coin, the five-pound quintuple sovereign, is much smaller than this and contains gold worth hundreds of pounds sterling). Even taking hyperbole into account, it is difficult to understand why the man would have refused such payment. As noted above, however, it is possible that the coins are mostly made of silver, since that metal is considerably cheaper.
External links
- CNN currency converter (http://cgi.money.cnn.com/apps/hpcurrconv)
- The Universal Currency Converter (for real-world currencies) (http://www.xe.com/ucc/)