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In the first book of the Harry Potter series we are told that Harry has piles of galleons inside his vault at Gringotts. Why didn't Harry draw a few gold coins from his safe and sold them in the muggle world to earn some money? That way he could've improved his quality of life in the muggle world quite a bit

I know the subject has been approached in other questions, but the closest answer I got was what would happen if Harry bought silver in the muggle world and sold it for gold in the magic world. I want to know what would happen exactly in this case.

OCA
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    See http://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/107030/4918 . It isn't quite the same question, but the answers are relevant. – b_jonas Nov 12 '16 at 21:33
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    Related, possible duplicate: http://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/34138/51379 – Adamant Nov 12 '16 at 21:39
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    I think we can happily close all of the "muggle/Wizard" arbitrage questions as dupes since all of the answers are basically going to cover the same ground. – Valorum Nov 12 '16 at 21:45
  • @Valorum Please take a look at the edit – OCA Nov 12 '16 at 21:54
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    @Valorum I also saw this one. Your're right it's pretty much the same. Still, in my question I didn't specify that Harry had to tell his aunt. Just some pocket money for himself would already have helped. – OCA Nov 12 '16 at 22:08
  • @ocuatrec - Harry was worried that the Dursleys would simply steal it from him. – Valorum Nov 12 '16 at 22:19
  • @Valorum He didn't have to tell them :) – OCA Nov 12 '16 at 22:19
  • @ocuatrec - They rummage his stuff. – Valorum Nov 12 '16 at 22:24
  • @Valorum Touché! – OCA Nov 12 '16 at 22:24
  • @Valorum He was able to hide food and books under the floorboards without the Dursleys knowing, so he could have hidden the money itself or items he bought there, too. He'd be limited to either buying consumable items (i.e. food) or things small enough to hide in the same place, though, so it's not like he'd be able to buy a TV. The real question is how he'd manage to convert Wizarding currency into Muggle currency; he had no access to Gringotts during the school holidays and Privet Drive seems like the kind of suburb that wouldn't be anywhere near a Muggle bank. – Anthony Grist Nov 12 '16 at 22:43
  • That means he'd have to do it when he was at Diagon Alley prior to the school year starting, in preparation for the next summer holidays, and Harry was never exactly good at planning ahead. – Anthony Grist Nov 12 '16 at 22:46
  • Seems to me that this is clearly a duplicate of the question @Valorum suggested, and not the question it's actually marked as a duplicate of. – recognizer Nov 12 '16 at 22:56
  • @recognizer - Which is what happens when you post-edit the question :-) - Now go mark it as a dupe... – Valorum Nov 12 '16 at 23:08
  • This is answered by DVK's 3rd point. "Even after he found out he was rich, he couldn't tell Dursleys because he knew they would just steal his money, NOT be nice to him hoping he'd give the money to them:" – Himarm Nov 12 '16 at 23:45
  • @Himarm - I’m having some trouble seeing how this is a duplicate of the one that you indicated. The answer that Valorum indicated initially still seems a lot closer. While point 3 in the accepted answer might help explain why Harry didn’t do it, they really don’t cover the same ground. – Adamant Nov 13 '16 at 02:09
  • @Adamant hes either asking why harry didnt use gold to improve his home life, which dvk answers, or hes asking for a purely opinion based answer. "Why didn't Harry draw a few gold coins from his safe and sold them in the muggle world to earn some money?That way he could've improved his quality of life in the muggle world quite a bit " this seems to be his primary, answer, and dvk answers that – Himarm Nov 13 '16 at 02:11
  • Yes, it's indeed strange. In book2 the Dursleys practically starved him, and there was a summer when Dudley had that graprfruit diet of his and all harry ate is stale cakes sent by owls (or did his friends put a preservation charm on the food?) why not have emergency muggle money stash hidden for cases like this or for public transport or whatever? It'd be easy to exchange wiz money to muggle when he was at gringotts'... he wouldn't have been completely at the Dursleus mercy then. The poor guy couldn't even buy a newspaper and he was so interested in the news in the summer in OotP –  Nov 13 '16 at 15:07

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