Hey everyone,
Welcome to another installment of Harry Potter Theory.
Today we’re going to be discussing, ONCE AGAIN, Harry Potter and his immense stacks
of gold.
However, the focus of today’s video examines Harry’s riches from a bit of a different
angle- looking at not JUST how he acquired all of his gold- but also at how much gold
he actually had.
I’ve done this with the help of an r/harrypotter redditor that I’ll mention later on.
To kick things off I’m going to briefly summarize WHY Harry was so rich, then we’ll
segue in to the sheer volume of gold that young Mr.Potter actually boasted.
Harry inherited his herculean sized piles of gold directly from his parents, of course,
but the family fortune certainly didn’t originate with them.
So, who DID it start with?
As it happens, the Potter family fortune began with the founding patriarch of the Potter
family- Linfred of Stinchcombe- a twelfth-century potioneer who found a great degree of success
in his profession.
Linfred was responsible for creating remedies still used to this day, including Skele-gro,
which repairs or in some instances grows back broken bones, and the Pepperup potion - a
cure for the common gold that helps to warm the drinker up.
Provided that Linfred’s potions are still used in the modern era, it should come as
no surprise that he was able to earn quite a healthy living- so healthy in fact that
he was able to stow away much of his riches inside of the Potter family vault.
However, the flow of money certainly didn’t end there, as some of Linfred’s descendants
decided to continue in his footsteps.
The next Potter to find success was Fleamont Potter, Harry’s grandfather and James’
dad, who continued to invent potions and rake in the cash.
During his lifetime, Fleamont took the family fortune and quadrupled it by creating the
famous Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion.
Although Fleamont never met Harry, he unquestionably set Harry up for life, as a large majority
of the gold inside Vault 687 was passed down from him.
When Harry’s finally old enough to attend Hogwarts, he’s brought to Gringotts’ vault
687 by Hagrid, where he sees his vast stacks of cash for the first time.
Inside his vault lies piles upon piles of gold, and today we’re going to be figuring
out just how much gold young Harry actually inherited.
With that said, however, I can’t move forward without crediting the original mathematician
behind these calculations, NeoKratosRed from Reddit.
I reached out to him before creating this video and he said he’d be happy for me to
take a closer at his calculations, so join me as we take a look at the exact figures
inside Harry’s vault.
NeoKratosRed begins by stating the following:
“So, what I did was a rough approximation of what would be Harry Potter's wealth in
terms of current Dollars, or at least a minimum estimate.
Since there is no reference of Harry's amount of money in the books, the closest canon estimate
we can get comes from the Vault 687 as shown in the 1st movie.“
He then goes on to include 3 screenshots showing Harry’s piles of gold from various angles,
screenshots which will help us to better understand the estimated volume.
After sharing the 3 images of Harry’s gold, he goes on to state the following before beginning
with his instructions on HOW he actually went about calculating Harry’s fortune.
“You could count the individual Galleons, but what I did was a small estimate.
HOWEVER, I summon smarter Ravenclaws to do things better than me and get a better result.”
STEP 1 - Measurements
Step 1 for NeoKratosRed was measuring the width, depth and height of the main pile,
then trying to include the coins from the sides.
Accompanying his words, he included the image shown on screen.
“15 coins in terms of depth” - “approx 75 coins in terms of height” - “approx
25 coins in terms of width (I’m counting 3 more layers out of the frame).
He then states the following:
“Now, this shape resembles a pyramid, and the formula for its volume is given by 'area
of base * height * 1/3', so in this case we have (25 * 30 * 75) / 3 = 18,750”
He also goes on to include that his formula is
correct, but that the diagram is a little off:
“I labelled the diagonals, when in fact I wanted to label the edges, so the formula
is still correct but the picture is not.”
After this, he shifts his attention to one of the other images of Harry’s gold as to
gain a better understanding.
The image reads “35 additional layers”
“HOWEVER, as we can see in this other frame, the base of our pyramid seems to be at the
same level of the pile of coins on the right, so from this picture we can assume that our
pyramid is AT LEAST 35 Galleons higher with a base that is AT LEAST THE SAME as ours,
so if we want to keep things as low as possible we can assume a shape like this one–”,
that added to our original count brings the number of Galleons of the central pile to
18,750 + (35 * 30 * 25) = 45,000
Along with the diagram on screen he adds:
(We could consider the white part of the shape, but we don't know how wide our base is at
the bottom, so underestimating things now should compensate for eventual overestimation
errors done before)
Next he says the following:
“NOW, looking at the right pile we can approximate its shape to half a box, and the volume gives
us (5 * 10 * 35)/2 = 875”
The image reads “35 additional layers, 10 depth, 5 width”
FINALLY on the left we have 2 piles, one in focus and one out of focus.
A rough approximate gives us (10 * 10 * 25)/2 = 1,250 Galleons.
I've considered half a box in this case as well to compensate for any overestimation).
The image reads “10 depth, 25 height, 10 width”
Following this he states the following:
“BUT!
We don't have to forget that these Galleons are at the same height of the base of the
Pyramid, so we heed to add the additional 35 layers, which multiplied by the base (10
* 10) give us: 1,250 + 10 * 10 * 35 = 4,750”
And through this complex series of calculations, NeoKratosRed was able to determine that Harry
had a MINIMUM of 50,625 galleons in his vault the first time he enters it.
This of course does not account for gold that Harry had accrued later in life, i.e inheritance
from Sirius, but it DOES highlight Harry’s level of wealth at the age of 11.
If you need a refresher on your wizarding currencies - there are 3 coins that are primarily
circulated within the wizarding community in Britain- Galleons, Sickles and Knuts (in
depreciating order).
But now you might be asking…What are they worth?
How does a Galleon compare to a US dollar or a UK pound?
Well, first let me give you the relative value of each form of wizarding currency.
1 galleon is said to be equal to 17 sickles or 493 knuts, which makes 1 sickle equivalent
to 29 knuts.
And according to JK Rowling, 1 galleon is equal to ‘about five great British pounds’.
Over the years this assigned value of 5 pounds has certainly been subject to copious speculation
(including an assertion that 1 galleon equals $25 dollars), but as far as sources go- I’d
say a quote from the original author is pretty reliable.
In the current market 1 great british pound is equivalent to about 1.227 US dollars, which
means that…drum roll please…
Harry had a MINIMUM of 5 x 50,625 or 253,125 pounds in his vault.
That’s $310,724 US dollars.
This DOES deviate from NeoKratosRed’s total, where he suggests that Harry’s net worth
is a minimum of 1.265625 million dollars or 1,030,638 pounds, BUT that’s only because
we’re going off of different values for 1 galleon.
For his calculation he used a figure supplied by a fellow redditor that may have been calculated
BEFORE the quote from JK Rowling.
NeoKratosRed also goes on to include the following notes regarding his calculations:
-This does not take into account other properties, like Grimmauld's Place
-This was a minimum estimate, which means that I took all the precautions of the case
to underestimate the actual wealth.
In the book we can read:
“Harry gasped.
Inside were mounds of gold coins.
Columns of silver.
Heaps of little bronze Knuts.”
This means that there were multiple mounds of gold coins, not just one, and there was
also silver.
-If we take into account the actual width and depth of a Vault we can see the value
skyrocket to tens of millions, assuming the whole floor is covered in gold and silver,
so I just tried to keep things as low as possible.
Overall I have to take my hat off to NeoKratosRed as I think that he did a standup job of calculating
the total value of Harry’s vault, particularly if we consider the extremely LIMITED resources
at our disposal.
And that’s it for this video!
Do you agree with these calculations?
Disagree?
WHY?
Please leave a comment down below.
Until next time
Remember
It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live