Potterheads are eternally grateful to J.K. Rowling for bringing to life not only the character of Harry Potter, but also the world in which he lived in - a entirely different land, language and currency.
A Reddit user recently posted a translation of items in the wizarding world into current-day dollars. If what the Reddit post says holds true, then Harry would have been very much loaded, while the Weasleys would have been more destitute that fans might have thought.
The Reddit post begins with an introduction to the in-depth currency of the wizarding world, with their money consisting of bronze Knuts, silver sickles and gold galleons. In the first book/movie, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," Harry is known to have gotten money out of his vault for the first time. Hagrid explains the conversion for the currency. A sickle is 29 Knuts, while a galleon is 17 sickles or 493 Knuts.
The "Harry Potter" books say nothing about how the above currencies actually convert to Muggle money and many of the magical items can't be translated into everyday products, but then again there were commonalities that allowed the Reddit contributor, aubieismyhomie, to approximate their values and convert them to U.S. currency.
The redditor used the price of items such as candy, hot chocolate and a toothbrush, among others, to come up with modern-day values for the wizarding world currency: a Knut is $.05, a Sickle is ~$1.50 and a Galleon is ~$25.
Based on those values, aubieismyhomie gave a snapshot of the conversion between the wizarding world and modern-day currencies.
"Based on this, a Butterbeer from the Hog's Head would be about $3 (as would hot chocolate on the Knight Bus), Harry bought about $18 of candy on the Hogwarts Express in his first year, and a high-level textbook costs about $225 (which Harry complained about how expensive it was)," writes aubieismyhomie.
In addition to that, we think that Harry paid $175 for his wand and spent $750 to buy Omnioculars for Ron, Hermoine and himself. Harry gave Fred and George $25,000 of his Triwizard Tournament winnings for them to start their joke shop, the Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes.
In "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," the Weasleys emptied their vault, which held a mere 1 galleon and a pile of sickles, which would have been around $50 to $75. With this money, they had to buy everyone's books, robes, wands, etc. Dobby received a salary of $25 a week, until he was offered 10 times that amount by Dumbledore. The Ministry was willing to give a $2.5 million reward for Harry's capture.
From these estimates, though much expected, we get a pretty good idea of how loaded Harry was, and how generous he was with his loved ones. Then again, these are only a couple of takeaways from the post's insight on the wizarding world currency.
For a full list of the value of every item mentioned in the Harry Potter series, check out the Reddit post.
