currency converter

According to the character Hagrid in the first novel, this system is "easy enough" to understand, although it is based on rather peculiar proportions. In keeping with the author's tendency to use satire in her books, wizarding currency is almost certainly a parody of the British monetary system before it was decimalised.

Estimates of worth

J.K. Rowling has stated in an interview with Comic Relief that a Galleon is worth "about five pounds." However, it is likely that the author has not thought this out in detail, or that the significantly different social structure (including the apparent lack of mass production) of wizardkind may mean significantly different prices for the similar items in the Muggle and wizarding worlds. The value of wizard money might vary greatly depending on the source used.

Low-value theory

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, and 7 Knuts (the figure is simplified to 34,000,000 galleons in Quidditch Through the Ages). It is also stated that the book costs £2.50, or 14 Sickles and 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, or US$9.06
• 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. A currency converter using the figure given by Rowling herself can be found on the Harry Potter Lexicon.

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, which technically is wholly possible given that a Philosopher's Stone is in existence up until the end of the first book in the series). The price of an ounce of gold is currently about US$425 (£225) per troy ounce, or somewhat over £7 per gram. To be worth five pounds in intrinsic value, a gold coin would need to weigh under a gram; to give an idea of size, a US dime weighs over 2 grams, and is made of metals far lighter than gold. 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). Another possibility is that it is made of gold, but its exchange value is magically reduced so that the coins can be reasonably large.

High-value theory

It is stated within the novels themselves that a copy of a daily newspaper cost between 1 and 5 Knuts. This would suggest that a Knut is worth between 10¢ and 50¢, making a Galleon worth somewhere between $49.30 and $219.50. If in fact a Galleon is worth about £51.20, or US$90.60, then the remark in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them can be explained as a simple numerical error, writing 34,000,000 for 3,400,000. That it persists throughout the book is easily explained by its having been written by Muggles who don't know any better.

Wands would thus cost several hundred dollars (which would explain why most wizards only seem to have one), and would make the start-up cost for Fred and George's store in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire around $100,000 (which is closer to what it would cost in the real world to lease the premises and purchase initial inventory). It would also bring the value of a gold galleon more in line with the actual value of gold.

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Dobby mentions that Dumbledore is paying him one Galleon a week for working at Hogwarts. He also mentions that Dumbledore offered him ten Galleons a week. This would make his pay on the low-Galleon scale five or so pounds a week, which is quite underpaid (although this may have to do with Dobby being a house-elf and not a normal human). On the high scale, it would be between fifty and two hundred pounds a week, a much more reasonable figure. The offer of ten Galleons a week seems quite incredible then, being on a scale of five hundred to two thousand pounds a week - however, Dumbledore is paradoxically incredibly generous and rich, and as such this could be considered inconclusive.

The high-value theory would also explain why Ron has never had a Galleon before, and why the Weasley family vault only contained one Galleon and a few Sickles. If a Galleon were only worth $10, the Weasleys would be in dire poverty rather than simply poor.

This idea of Galleons having greater value than pounds is also implied when Harry gives Fred and George Weasley his Triwizard prize money - one thousand Galleons. Although it is known that to rent a shop on Diagon Alley is expensive, 1000 Galleons seems to be enough - the Weasley twins even use part of the money to manufacture their joke products.

It should also be noted that in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Fred and George Weasley tell Hermione that their 'Weasley's Wildfire Wizzbangs' are 5 galleons for the Basic Blaze Box, and 20 galleons for the Deflagration Deluxe. This would mean that the Blaze Box would be approximately £255 (based on the estimate above), and the second kit would range about £1020! This seems quite expensive for fireworks, magical as they may be. Many of Fred and George's products sold over the course of books 4 and 5 would cost exhorbitant amounts, according to the high-value theory.

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 the possibility that other Gringotts branches exist elsewhere, most notably in Egypt, where Ron's older brother Bill worked prior to his attempt to get a transfer to the London branch.

Because there are apparently no banknotes in the wizard world, and because the coins apparently come in just three different values, wizard money would be expected to be quite cumbersome to count out -- and heavy to carry, unless they are magically enchanted to be lighter. It is debatable why wizards (or the Gringotts goblins) do not introduce intermediate-value coins such as 5-Sickle, 5-Knut, or 15-Knut.

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 (Dumbledore'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 cashews). 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". Although its possible the muggle was exaggerating, 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 (or the muggle could have suspected that they were fake). Furthermore the event happened at an international gathering, so the coins might well have been foreign, or even bullion ingots and not actual Galleons.

Also, in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Hagrid tells Harry to pay the owl with a few knuts, the little bronze ones. So we know the knuts are smallest and the galleons are largest.

Possible etymologies

A galleon is an early form of ocean-going ship famous for its treasure hoards.

"Sickle" is a word used in the English language New Testament to translate "shekel," the currency of Judea, and modern day Israel. William Tyndale also called them "silverlings," that is, little silver coins. A sickle is also a bladed tool, which can be, and sometimes is depicted in films, books, and other media, as a weapon. Additionally, in the Narnia series by C. S. Lewis, one of the nations, Calormen, used Sickles as its base currency.

"Knut" is a variant spelling of "Cnut" or Canute, a Viking ruler whose empire in the 11th century comprised Norway, Denmark and England. Also, this coin is pronounced just as it is spelled; the "k" is not silent, unlike in "knob" or "know."

There is a perfect correspondence in the initial sounds of the names of the coins to the currency metals gold, silver and copper.

External links

• Galleons-to-Muggle money converter from the Harry Potter Lexicon
• CNN currency converter
• The Universal Currency Converter (for real-world currencies)