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.

Estimates of worth

There are no definite facts about the worth of wizarding money in Muggle terms. It's possible that the author has not thought it out in detail, and the significantly different social structure (magic, not technology) of wizardkind may mean significantly different prices for the same kinds of 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 about £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 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 70 US dollars or 50 Euro according to conversion rates in December 2004), which would put it on a par with some of the more expensive merchandise wands sold (which of course lack any magical power).

In 2004, the company Travelex released an article which said that, "Using its team of currency experts, Travelex has calculated the exchange rate for the Wizard Money used by the pupils at Hogwarts". Travelex also produced a JavaScript currency calculator which converts several major national currencies into Galleons, Sickles and Knuts. The mechanism works on the simple principle that 1 Knut = 1 British penny, and so 1 Galleon is worth £4.93, slightly less than the value obtained from the book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

An earlier currency converter was produced by CNN in 2001. The CNN calculator assumes that money in the Harry Potter world is worth less than the figures established in this article (presumably it used the figure that £3.01 = 1 Galleon, or something similar).

If a Galleon is indeed worth about five British pounds, then we may be sure that it is not in fact 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 colored 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. One might ask why wizards (or the Gringott goblins) do not introduce intermediate value coins (such as 5-Sickle, 5-Knut, and 15-Knut).

The unusual exchange rate (17 Sickles per Galleon and 29 Knuts per Sickle) suggests that the values of the coins may possibly depend upon those of the metals from which they are made, and are set to each other much like a currency peg (such as "3.8 Malaysian ringgits per U.S. dollar"). These ratios may be revised if the actual worth of the coins changes too much relative to each other, which generally does not happen often. So, for example, if silver suddenly becomes more expensive relative to the metals which make up the Sickle, the ratio might be changed from 16 to 19 Sickles per Galleon. Thus, the ratio being 17 Sickles per Galleon when Harry starts school may be due simply to random currency fluctuations.

Bank

The only reference to a bank in Harry Potter is Gringotts, located in Diagon Alley and run by goblins. Hagrid indicates in fact that wizards have "just the one" bank.

There is a possiblity of other Gringotts locations in the worlds, most notably in Egypt, where Ron's older brother, Bill , worked prior to attempting to get a transfer to the London Location at Diagon Alley

Design

A serial number referring to the goblin who cast a Galleon is around the edge of the coin.

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 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). (However, the British fifty-pence piece is seven-sided, the only British coin that is not round, apart from twenty-pence pieces).

Early toys released before the films came out also give rise to this idea, one of the toys having plastic knuts in it, shaped hexagonally with a star cut out in the centre.

Specifications

Likewise, we are not told anything in particular about the size or weight of the coins, though in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire there is reference by a Muggle to someone trying 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's possible that the coins are in fact silver, since that metal is considerably cheaper, and only colored gold since it's more easily recognizable as being worth more than the Sickle and fits in with the hierarchy copper/bronze, silver, gold. Perhaps the coins offered in the previous paragraph were 100-Galleon coins made from 100 ounces of silver!

Links

• Travelex currency converter
• CNN currency converter
• The Universal Currency Converter