Someone on Reddit figured out the IRL worth of all the items in “Harry Potter”

Yesterday, Reddit user aubieismyhomie did what we Harry Potter fans do best and theorized about something in J.K. Rowling’s fictional (OR IS IT?) Wizarding World. This time, that something came in the form of speculating how much each denomination of wizard money – gold Galleons, silver Sickles, and bronze Knuts – equates to in Muggle money, in terms of US dollars.

To figure this out, aubieismyhomie (who, according to a badge next to their user name, is of course a Ravenclaw) collected a list of all the items in the Harry Potter series with a wizard-money value attached to them. Then, they took the exchange rates of the different wizard coins given to Harry by Hagrid in the first book (1 Galleon = 17 Sickles, 1 Sickle = 29 Knuts).

Finally, to figure out the approximate US currency value of each coin, then they compared the cost of some items we find in the series to items we can find just as easily in the Muggle world, like a hot chocolate that Harry purchases on the Knight Bus and some of the kids’ Hogwarts textbooks. They came up with the following exchange rate:

1 Galleon = about $25 1 Sickle = about $1.50 1 Knut = about $.05

Vastly differing values, but we American Muggles (or No-Maj — ugh) can’t talk since we still use pennies.

Anyway, aubieismyhomie drew some interesting conclusions about some of the characters in the series – like the Weasley family, who at one point had the equivalent of only between $50 and $75 in their Gringotts vault (1 Galleon and a pile of Sickles) and had to buy all the kids robes and books and whatnot for school. Ouch. But good news: They won about $17,500 in that Daily Prophet contest that sent them to Egypt, so hopefully it helped get them out of debt some too.

On the flip side, Harry – whom we know was loaded, since his grandfather developed Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion and he inherited that fortune after his parents died – spent the equivalent of a whopping $250 each on Omnioculars for himself, Ron, and Hermione at the Quidditch World Cup in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – which he told them were their Christmas presents for the next 10 years, so it makes sense. He also gave Fred and George his TriWizard winnings to help them open Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes (1,000 Galleons, or $25,000). That checks out, and also proves that wow, Harry was a nice kid.

We also learn, through aubrieismyhomie’s clever findings, that Ollivander wands were kind of a steal at 7 Galleons/about $175, while textbooks were a total rip-off just like in the Muggle world, at about the same amount of money as a wand for higher-level books. Oh, and the price on Harry’s head later in the series? $2.5 million. Let that sink in for a bit.

You can read more about the cost of everything in the Harry Potter series on Reddit here!

(Image via Warner Bros.; GIFs via Warner Bros. / here and here)