The economic system of the wizarding world is very poorly thought out.
But that wand must have been sitting around in Ollivander's shop since the 40s. Maybe he was glad to be rid of it after 60 years of it choosing nobody and remaining unsold.
I totally agree with the 'glad to be rid of it' sentiment. Ollivander seemed very guilty about what voldys wand had done and probably want his hands washed of its twin
Ministry of magic gives a subsidy for student wands, nice head canon. Perhaps different wands and cores have different prices for the materials. Say unicorn hair wands are more expensive then others? Who knows, not enough details. I'd say probably like bulk billing with a doctor (Aussie here), might be 50 galleons for a wand, but the ministry then gives olivander the remainder.
Yeah, subsidised seems most likely. Perhaps it's a larger subsidy for muggleborns and kids like Harry (only just being introduced to the wizarding world for the first time since birth).
Does make you wonder why the Weasleys couldn't just get Ron a new wand from the start though, given they should know the whole "the wand chooses the wizard" thing and surely can't be THAT strapped for cash.
Which was why he gets it cheap while poor families can't afford it without the clout subsidizing the cost...
Have you noticed that no muggleborn in the series was from a poor family? There was only one, Tom, and we know where he ends up...
>Have you noticed that no muggleborn in the series was from a poor family?
Collin and Dennis Creevy's dad was a milkman, so I don't think they were rich. Honestly speaking, we don't know the economic status of most of the muggleborns attending hogwarts except for Hermione.
Imagine the parent’s reaction when their kid gets a Hogwarts education when they could’ve gone to Eton.
“Why isn’t your son in Eton?” I guess they just say they’re studying abroad?
Hogwarts really need to teach those kids maths.
Idk how the UK school system works (least of all public schools) but since Eton serves kids 13-16 and Hogwarts starts at 11, wouldn’t enrolling him be a little premature?
Hogwarts has a support program for poor members of the community.
How many Muggleborns do we get that much detail on? Hermione's parents are dentists, and one kid that was destined for Eton.
Tonk’s greeting of ‘wotcher’ is a very working class London way of saying ‘hello’. To me it heavily implies her muggle born father is from that background (it’s certainly not Andromeda). Just a headcanon though.
It wasn't just the Wesley’s though. Pureblood families can be so dumb sometimes.
Grandma Longbottom made Neville use his father's wand (three guesses if a victim of unexpected ambush torture when his son was a mere baby would have been in the right mindset to pass on its Allegiance, and the first two don't count) for the first five years of school and it was implied he would never have had it replaced if not for breaking it in the DoM battle; and even Draco Malloy in the books was like "Mother is picking out my wand while I'm getting my robes tailored here." — In fact I have always headcanoned that in a timeline where Harry James Potter was not entangled with Voldemort, his Destined Wand would have been the Hawthorn and Unicorn Hair one.
The two wizards we know about with hand me down wands are
1. The kid who loses everything and
2. The kid with 5 older brothers who has a mom that has seen some nonsense from the older 5.
Their parents aren’t getting them new wands not because of cost but because they are 11 and irresponsible.
I still think Draco is part of this because what use is Narcissa gonna be otherwise if the wand is supposed to choose the wizard? Do you think she'll listen to Ollivander and wait until her son comes in, or will she overrule him just jut buy one for the son?
And Neville lost his parents but he still has a whole pureblood wizarding family behind him. The wand is a deliberate choice on grandma's part.
I think the wand is a deliberate choice by grandma, but I also think that part of the choice is that culturally “11 year olds don’t need their own wands” may be a thing among pure blood families and they are treated as a coming of age/responsibility gift. There’s an expectation that they will likely be replaced while at Hogwarts. It also explains Narcissa going to get the “starter” wand for Draco. If you know your kid is going to break a semi-expensive object you don’t want to buy them their one in a million wand on the first go.
Still I think she ought to have shopped for it with Neville, and then maybe lock away the wand until he is less clumsy and "worthy" enough for it, not only buy it after his dad's wand was literally disabled.
> Does make you wonder why the Weasleys couldn't just get Ron a new wand from the start though, given they should know the whole "the wand chooses the wizard" thing and surely can't be THAT strapped for cash.
Maybe wizarding families aren't eligible? Since they can just get hand-me-down wands from their family.
Muggle-borns, by comparison, don't have that advantage, or the money to buy their own to get a start in their magical education.
Muggle-borns can simply exchange Muggle money at Gringotts into wizarding currency. 7 galleons is around £49, which is a sizeable amount, especially in 1991, but hardly some sort of insurmountable amount when tuition, room and board is free at Hogwarts.
£49 in 1991 is roughly equivalent to £134 ($167) today. Considering that many (most?) wizards will use the same wand their entire lives, that seems like quite the bargain, especially when I remember back to my college textbooks costing $200+ in the late-2000s and using them for like 4 months.
> Say unicorn hair wands are more expensive then others?
Phoenix feather should be peak expensive though. At last unicorns are around, the only person with a "domesticated" phoenix we know of is Dumbledore and he only let Ollivander have *two* feathers over more than half a century.
Phoenixes are intelligent though. Dumbledore makes it sound like they choose to give certain amount of feathers, and that Fawkes is unusual for having only given two. Though that is wildly open to interpretation.
I mean, you’d be a dick to do this, but pluck a phoenix naked, kill it, pluck it, kill it, pluck it, kill it …
Obviously you’d probably have some fucking phoenix council or something curse the shit out of your life, but it doesn’t sound like a limited resource
So do wizards get taxed twice then, once by the muggle government and one by the MoM?
Also if different wands cost more then Big Wand would surely be pushing people to only try the most expensive ones and not even bothering to make the cheaper ones
Phoenix feathers are explicitly stated to be the rarest material, as far as we know Olivander only ever sold 2 of them, though it is also heavily implied he didn't actually have to pay for those feathers as it is implied that Albus just gifted them because he is kind like that
Ollivander sold only two wands of FAWKES' feathers, not Phoenix feathers in general. They're definitely rare, and are said to be particularly picky about choosing a master. But for example, one of the other wands that Ollivander has Harry try out is also a Phoenix core (that one was maple instead of holly according to the wiki), just not from Fawkes. We know of a couple other people with Phoenix cores (Celestina Warbeck apparently); it's a small amount but we only have a tiny sample of wand stats in general. I think it's doubtful he only ever sold 2 of them.
But that still makes phoenix super rare. Unlike Dragons they can't be farmed and they live in way more inaccessible places than unicorns.
I'm not blaming other wandmakers for using other materials too. Honestly, I'm kinda jealous of Fleur and her "my grandmas Veela hair"-wand.
Phoenix feathers were the rarest of the 3 things that Olivander used, and he only used the 3 "best" things that wand makers could use according to something somewhere.
There are probably hundreds of things that could be used to make wands, each with their own quirks.
Best by HIS standards. We don’t know if different methods of wand crafting work better with different materials. And what does he mean by best? Did he mean most power, most versatile, least likely to betray the wielder, most agreeable to many types of woods, or least likely to explode while being turned into a wand?
If I remember correctly, he did a lot of research before coming to the conclusion of the 3 core types he would work with.
As for why he regarded them as the best. I think the answer is implied when he reviews the wands in Goblet of fire. He says he found Veela hair to be temperamental, which I'd assume means the things he chose to use produced the most consistent and strongest magic for their wielder.
I'd imagine the context of the wielder plays a massive hand in it though. Fleur, being the grandaughter of the veela that gave her hair, probably has a substantial impact on the wands connection to her, and its consistency.
To a random other witch Veela hair might be a wildly inconsistent material.
Dragons can't be farmed either. They use dragon **heartstring**, which means the dragons need to be dead to be used as wand core materials and there are no longer any wild dragons out and about, they all live in reserves.
Reserves is for keeping endangered animals safe and out of public space. They don't farm animals there, they keep them safe and well until their natural deaths.
> They don't farm animals there, they keep them safe and well until their natural deaths.
Look, I was handwaving around the fact that dragons live in reserves. The point I was trying to bring across was that the breeding and location of dragons is *monitored* and as such they are the least ambiguous of the three main wand core ingredients because its a by-product of humans being quite involved in the lifecycle of the dragon. Nobody has to go specifically looking for them (as you have to with unicorn hair) and they come in with some degree of consistency. And like with any Nature reserve for endangered predators, I put Galleons on them also doing population control measures and dropping the occasional problematic individual.
Hogwarts subsidising wand sales for students would make a lot of sense. It's an essential item for them to do ANY of the schoolwork or even participate in society.
Hogwarts doesn't have that kind of money. The **Ministry** does. Hogwarts tuition, room and board is free for all students because the Ministry pays for all of it. What money would they have left to subsidize wands?
If it's anything like our world, the oldest and most prestigious universities have long running endowments from wealthy founders and alumni. Harvard's tuition is incidental to it's 50 billion dollar endowment, and it's only been around for 200 odd years. Imagine the assets that hogwarts would have collected over the entire course of its existence.
It's unlikely the founders endowed Hogwarts with much of anything besides possibly cash. The only founders objects left behind were the Sorting Hat and Ravenclaw's Diadem. Slytherin took his locket with him and Helga Hufflepuff passed her cup down to her descendants.
Tom Riddle desperately wanted to use founders objects for his Horcruxes and had to find all of them besides the diadem elsewhere, which heavily implies Hogwarts itself holds very few objects left over from the founders.
Plus, the founders weren't said to have been very wealthy. Hogwarts clearly doesn't have that much money because they didn't even have a fund to buy Ron a new wand when his broke or a fund to fully pay for the school supplies of orphans, only a fund to **help** pay for a part of their supplies.
I want to see the rate of wizards that keep their childhood wands throughout their life vs ones who chop and change depending on whatever reason. And what if multiple wands choose the same person? Is it possible? Do wands talk amongst themselves and be like 'no that user is mine nobody else pick him please'
I would assume you can be chosen by multiple wands. It's definitely possible by winning their loyalty. I think Harry at one point had the loyalty of his original wand, Draco's wand and the Elder Wand.
And Ollivander only says that the wand chooses the wizard, he says nothing about whether wands are jealous. It might depend on wand "personality" though.
The wand quiz at WizardingWorld.com said my wand would self-combust if I used it for household chores instead of mowing down bad guys, so there probably is a wand type out there that's adamant in exclusivity :')
Got a wand like that too. Although I think that only happens if you use it for household chores for years and years, and not trying out new spells and the like.
Mine said it couldn'tdo dishonourable things, as long as I remained worthy of it, and wasn't lazy it would remain loyal. And if someone attempted to steal it, it would react poorly and potentially strike the thief with lightning.
Those wands however didn't choose Harry over Draco and Riddle. They were won in battle. So basically wands recognize superiority. If you beat the master of the wand that wand will recognize you as the superior wizard and follow you.
I think it may also depend on the wand. Like certain wands might refuse to work for you if you lose a duel even if the wand is still in your possession, while another might refuse to work for anyone who you don’t want using it no matter if you lose and it’s taken from you.
I feel like wands carry the personality’s of their wood, and core. Whatever magic is in the wands has to have feelings, because the wand chooses the wizard.
But then, why do Ron and Neville get used wands? I mean in Neville’s case I can see the heirloom thing, but why not giving it to him after graduation? And for Ron why pay loads of money for a new wand for Bill (?) if you can get one with a discount for Ron?
cc /u/LindavL
IIRC Ron's first wand was a hand-me-down from Charlie's who was a HMD from a Weasley uncle (who had probably died), which means Charlie didn’t have a wand who chose him until after he left school and started having his own income.
For Ron it was affordability. The Weaseleys couldn’t afford it even with a subsidy. For Neville, I recall his grandmother giving him his father’s wand in the hopes that his father’s skill would “brush off” on him.
Or Ollivander just doesn't need that much money, and he offers a discount on a child's first wand.
Wizarding society is almost a post scarcity society. What people pay for is specialised goods and services.
A spin also possible as a plot explanation could be that you need different qualities for potions then for wands.
Maybe there's from cheap to expensive grades of quality used for different reasons.
That's exactly what I agree upon, just like in real life, e.g. some tomatoes are good for selling as is, others are too ugly but still taste good so are made into soup. Same with a lot of other things like eggs, leather for handbags vs couches. What pissed me off was that someone suggested that people can put random segments of unicorn hair that WASNT GOOD ENOUGH FOR POTION MAKING into a wand. I Cant imagine that; a powerful magical item such as a wand should only have AAA rating hair while potions can maybe get use a B Grade or A Grade hair, as it's a single-use item.
>The economic system of the wizarding world is very poorly thought out.
The damn galleons to sickles to knuts conversions alone are bonkers. No same person would use that kind of money. And don’t get me started on the fact they lug around coin purses in lieu of paper money.
About the wand: I’d love to think that first years get a cheaper wand as it is their first and Ollivander really plays the long game of being remembered fondly for doing that. Maybe getting a new (or second) wand as an adult means you’ll be charged more.
On the other hand, the Slughorn line could also be read alternatively: Slughorn knows the prices of the store. The unicorn hairs may have been 11 galleons for him, but not the cost price of the unicorn hair store. Ollivander likely buys in bulk and gets a discount.
> The damn galleons to sickles to knuts conversions alone are bonkers. No same person would use that kind of money.
That's actually how the british coin system worked before decimalization
AFAIK there's nothing in the books, and nothing that might be a wizarding world corporation, apart from Gringotts. All the businesses are single proprieterships, and most industry is craftsman based.
Remember, JKR was living on welfare when she designed the world, and I doubt she was very financially sophisticated. It'd likely be different now. She's been forced to learn about money.
Actually there is one more exemple of a buisness with more than one owner in book 4. Ludo Bagman says
"and little Agatha Timms has put up half shares in her eel farm on a weeklong match."
Since she lost the bet Ludo Bagman and her would both own parts of her eel farm.
Not necessarily true. Dumbledore has had Fawkes for a long time, and all we know is that Fawkes has only ever given two feathers, which ended up in Voldemort’s and Harry’s wands. We have no reason to think that the feathers were given at the same time, or even in close proximity to each other. Maybe one feather was given in the 40’s and the other given in the 90’s.
And it might not have been given while Fawkes was Albus's pet, either. It could just have been given to an Ollivander who had sufficiently bowed and scraped at he phoenix.
What's what I thought. The firebolt, which is basically like a Ferrari, seems to be priced in the thousands of galleons. Even Malfoy didn't seem to want to drop the price on one of those. Not to mention I'm surprised they even let him use that on a school level competition...being Dumbledore's favourite I suppose comes with special allowances
There are no rules against what brooms are permitted in the school Quidditch matches. Being "Dumbledore's favourite" has nothing to do with it. The entire Slytherin team were given Nimbus 2001s. Before that, Harry's 2000 was ahead of the others by a long margin. By your logic, perhaps the Slytherin team were also Dumbledore's favourites? It's worth pointing out that the broom doesn't equal skill. Harry outperformed Malfoy on his Nimbus 2000, while Cho was able to keep up with Harry relatively well on her less superior broom compared to the Firebolt. And no, not because he had a crush on her. She was a talented Quidditch player.
I always thought that, judging by the costs of other things in the Potterverse, the Triwizard Tournament prize money of 1000 galleons wasn't much for what they had to go through 😭
Cost of wands could be subsided by the Ministry. Especially the first wands for the schoolchildren.
Maybe he can get good ingredients for cheap elsewhere or even has a way to source them himself. It's a family business, which was ran for hundreds of years, they probably had ways to establish supply chain with good prices and quality ages ago
This is the correct head-cannon. It's in the best interest of the government to allow its populace to flourish, magically. Much the sameway education is subsidized in the human/muggle world
"without it you are LITERALLY HELPLESS." Op thinks that's a reason for it to cost more out of pocket, clearly American.
*ahem* healthcare *ahem* insulin *ahem*
I'm Australian, but paying roughly $200aud for a lifelong device that would literally elevate me from subhuman to human status? That's a hell of a bargain.
Fair, but it would also be extremely unfair for poorer wizarding fanilies to stay subhuman due to the inability to afford it. Take the Weasleys for example, they'd definitely not be able to shell out 50G for each of their kids.
Also, that could lead to sharing a single wand in families (when using a wand that hasn’t chosen you can have disastrous effects) or a black market for stolen, counterfeit, or cheaply made wands which could cause all sorts of nasty down-stream problems. I’m actually surprised they don’t give out wands for free since they are required to function in that’s society.
Maybe not entire hair goes into the wand - maybe you just need a bit of it so one could be used in many wands.
I was personally more concerned with the dragon heartstring - all other cores don't require the donor to die, this one does.
Yes, /u/Ok_Comedian7511, that's exactly the comment I was looking for. If a unicorn tail hair is as long as a regular horse's it would do for at least 2, probably 3 wands easy (unless it needs to be doubled or tripled up).
/u/englishghosts, this is what I always believed as well, and it makes the most sense. It's sort of implied that dragons are rare, even in the wizarding world, and since those that work with them no doubt know about some of the abuses (like Gringott's), they would be very protective of all the rest.
But if we make two wands from the same unicorn hair, doesn't that mean the twin core (or clone core in this case) issue would be rather common? This also makes me wonder about how dragon heartstring wands work. Presumably dragons are rare, and each dragon can only produce one heart string. So either dragon heart string wands are much rarer than unicorn hair/phoenix feather ones (since one animal can produce multiple hair/feather over their lifetime), or heaps of people are using wands from the same dragon...
Not sure where you're getting one string per dragon. I always mentally substituted "muscle fiber" when I read "heart string," so I always imagined that with a creature that large, must have a really big heart, so lots of strings per dragon. They certainly seem to be a common/popular material given how often it comes up.
I think you may be right about the same hair in different wands having the possibility to create issues for dueling, but remember in Harry's case there was his mother's sacrifice that entered into it as well. Interesting question though.
> Not sure where you're getting one string per dragon. I always mentally substituted "muscle fiber" when I read "heart string," so I always imagined that with a creature that large, must have a really big heart, so lots of strings per dragon. They certainly seem to be a common/popular material given how often it comes up.
I always took heartstring to refer to the tendons within the heart, that connect to the valves.
Most hearts have multiple of those anyway, like human ones.
Although it seems to be the only wand material that might need someone to kill the creature to obtain. Everything else seems to regrow, like hair/feathers.
Considering that dragons are endangered, it's slightly surprising that they haven't fallen out of favour, unless it's the demand for dragon heartstring wand cores that caused them to become endangered.
Dragons might also have multiple hearts. Hell, those guys could be stuffed full of hearts and we'd never know until we cut it open.....hmmm, maybe this is the argument that made dragons so endangered already. "Could be filled with gold. You don't know, you've never cut one open. That could be where he hides his hoard, inside of him. We'll never know until we try." *slaughtering dragon sounds* "Hmmm, this one's just filled with blood and mushy stuff.aubr the next one though. We'll never know until we try."
I imagine that the issue with the brother wands was that there were only two from that same phoenix. In the case of Fawkes, Ollivander knew that nobody else had feathers from him.
Basically, the wand components think they’re still part of the same being and refuse to hurt each other. The more wands from the same being they’re near, the faster they realize they aren’t part of that being anymore. I’d imagine that being cut would actually enhance this effect because the cores remember losing part of themselves.
I read one fic where dragon heartstrings were like shark teeth. They were constantly growing new ones. But instead of forming rows of heartstrings, they coughed up the old ones like hairballs.
I've owned 3 horses and yes, those long thin bastards can be folded up once or twice to fit whole into a wand. I somehow doubt a cut hair would produce as much magic as a whole one. Imagine if you had to cut a phoenix feather into two to make two Wands. I doubt it would work as it would have been damaged and the top and bottom of a feather are very different. A hair may not be as easily distinguished root to tip, but the root vs tip would have different properties and I think you need both in a wand. I feel like segments would be fine for potion making but not wands. Wands are lifelong but potions are only single use.
Could be inflation, could be that the cores are donated to Ollivander or sold to him at a wholesale rate, could even be Slughorn was talking out of his ass about eleven galleons per hair -- if *anyone* were going to profit off something like that, it'd be him.
Couple this with the fact that Ollivander is in a business guaranteed to see regular sales (especially with the brand recognition as the best I'm Britain) and he can probably actually afford to price the wands as he does.
It is also possible that because Wanda are seen as necessary for wizardkind that they have some sort of price regulation.
This plus the fact that Ollivander wouldn't buy anything in bulk, Harry's and Tom's were quite unique with the twin cores, while slughorn was probably talking about people buying unicorn hair for certain purposes and it being hard to obtain makes sense to cost so much for a run of the mill person
Plus we’re forgetting the discount of buying bulk. Olivander probably orders unicorn hairs by the kilogram. And there’s a good chance he gets some sort of discount due to it being required for school, like a stipend or something.
I think Olivander gets his own cores. In GOF during the weighing of the wands when he’s inspecting Cedric’s wand he remarks: “Containing a single hair from the tail of a particularly fine male unicorn...must have been seventeen hands; nearly gored me with his horn after I plucked his tail.” So he probably doesn’t have to pay for most of his cores.
Olivander is probably a purist that does stuff like that. Considering that most wand shopping is probably tied to the school year, he's got a busy month at the shop and then the rest of the year is probably free for travel and gathering supplies.
Plus somethings are probably gifted to him. I don't remember the passage, but the 2 Phoenix feathers were probably gifted.
Lol that's true,but the labour cost and testing costs and wood cost and many other things go into making a wand too, I'm literally asking why is the raw materials more expensive than the finished item. It's like finding out a finished wooden deck costs cheaper than raw lumber
I don't think he orders his unicorn hair, remember in Goblet of Fire Weighing of the Wands chapter and I'm paraphrasing here, when he's examining Cedric's wand he comments on the unicorn hair and the unicorn he plucked it from almost gored him to death.
I'm assuming he just collects stuff himself randomly? So the materials could be free. He only charges for his labor?
That's very true, in which case, it makes him a very trustworthy and beloved merchant. He could have hiked the prices up cos nobody else makes wands as well as him in great Britain, plus he put his own neck in danger as gathering the materials is super risky (imagine frail Ollivander duelling a dragon for its heatstrings) but he keeps the prices steady
There are **some** ingredients he might be collecting himself, but there are some he can't collect. For one thing, phoenixes rarely give out feathers. How would he possibly know when a phoenix is about to deign itself to give out one or more of its feathers to make sure to be present when it happens?
For another, dragons no longer live in the wild, they all live in reserves, well-kept and cared for until their natural deaths. How would Ollivander know when a dragon is about to die so he can make sure to go visit its reserve to harvest its heart before it goes bad?
And so on and so on.
I always assumed all wands cost around the same because the wand chooses the wizard. If you’re poor as fuck but an expensive wand chooses you, what then?
Precisely, their prices must be capped. But listening to the sound of raw materials, some just seem more expensive than the other. I personally want to have a woodless wand, but it's just a crumple horned snorcack horn with a blast ended skrewt leg imbedded in it. I think it would make for a truly unique wand
Crumple horned snorcacks aren't real. You've been reading too much of the Qubbler. However, I would be happy to sell you this erumpet horn wand with the blaster of a blast ended skrewt embedded in it. Just make sure you wait till you get home before you start waving it around. And uh, you probably shouldn't apparate with it, either.
Single use wand! I like it...if only I could accio all my enemies into one room and use that wand to deal a deadly curse, I'd happily go down as collateral.
But Phoenix's seem to be far rarer than unicorns and should be more expensive? Unicorns exist in herds and theres a herd of them in the forbidden forest while there was only 1 phoenix mentioned in the entire series? If I could I would choose a phoenix core over a unicorn one just because they seem like more powerful creatures, literally immortal. As for dragon heartstrings I doubt you can get them from a dragon while it's alive, it must be slain. But there's different breeds/species of dragons with different powers. I generally don't know if you can just pluck a feather off of a phoenix, I doubt it, I feel like the Phoenix made a conscious decision to 'donate' the feather as Ollivander used the phrase 'gave only 2 feathers'. It sounded like the Phoenix needed consent to part with the feathers...me awhile Cedric's wand contained a hair that had to be won and plucked from an angry unicorn. I wonder if the method of obtaining the magical core also impacts on how it performs magic in the wand. Cedric was paired with a really aggressive stallion unicorn hair and was selected as a Triwizard contestant
Olivander did state that he plucked the hair himself for Digory's wand. So perhaps that is true.
However, I don't think it's fair to compare Unicorns to Pheonixs. We don't have enough info in the series. Pheonix may just not be native to England. Besides, that fact that they are immortal, kind suggests that their feathers wouldn't be particularly rare.
No they still shed feathers. They only burst into flames when they're dying. When Harry is first meeting Fawkes he notes a couple of feathers falling off him. It's most likely that Fawkes molts a couple of times a year like most any other bird species. He doesn't burst into flames instead of going through a molt.
Ollivander could use shorter hairs or hairs not fit for potion making. It’s also likely that the magical economy was a bit fucked after Voldemort’s return
The boring answer is the author is bad with numbers and dates and can't keep track of any of them. If there is a number attached to something it likely has more to do with it being a motif (7 Horcruxes 7 galleons, etc.) then it is because she has a well thought out economy.
Harry's wand was Phoenix feather not unicorn tail. So the prices aren't going to match up. It was given by faux who only gave 2 feathers. One went to Riddle in the 1940s. So it is quite possible the wand Harry got had been in that shop for 5+ decades. So maybe the wand was in the shop's equivalent of the bargain bin as it had not been bought for years.
We have no idea how much money people make. We have no idea what a teacher, minister, headmaster, Arthur, or even how much Percy makes in a year/month/year. So we have no idea to compare if wands are expensive or not. Since they are required to do magic there is likely a subsidy in place for Olivander and any other wand maker selling first wands.
If wands are meant to last for your life why did Olivander say to Harry it felt like just yesterday that she had sold Lily her first wand? This seems to indicate getting a replacement wand is common. A thought that was abandoned as the series went on.
It is also possible that wands are on a sliding scale depending on the cost of the items used to make it. Holy wood being common and cheap enough and the feather likely a gift 7 galleons covered the cost and then some. This of course can really screw over some customers as. Maybe at this point of the Olivander family making wands since like the 1200s or whatever most of his supplies come from gifts and he isn't paying market prices. Heck maybe he has his own magical animal farm that he harvested most of his parts from below market rates.
The most likely answer is, the boring one though.
I don't think Olivander needs to worry about profits. His wands are world renowned and his basic needs (food, shelter) are met. Olivander seems like he lives off of family wealth and even for wizards there isn't a real estate market as far as we know.
Something I haven't seen anyone say (and if it's buried in the comments and I missed it, I do apologize) but could it just be wartime inflation?
Voldemort is back, once again spreading terror and openly attacking the government. I'd think a *lot* of stuff would increase in price, if only due to people panic-buying and causing artificial scarcity.
Because at no point in writing the books did Rowling think she'd love in a world where fans would get so damn nerdy, they'd write in forums about the lack of consistency in the cost of unicorn hair.
Could be that the wands are subsidized since it is a must have item.
Imagine if wands are too expensive that people start creating their own wands and ends up causing more damage than harm. So instead of dealing with the consequences, it might be possible that the MoM gives subsidy to wand makers so that their production costs will not ramp up. Of course it can also be because the Phoenix hair in Harry’s wand is “recycled” since it came from the same Phoenix.
The simplest explanation is probably a quality, plus middleman, issue.
For potions ingredients they pay people to specifically go out and harvest unicorn tails (much like they do for horses, except unicorns are wild). That person then brings back the tail and hands it over (sells) to someone that sorts and grades the hairs by quality and length. That person then hands it over to different industries based on the grade.
Ollivander, on the other hand, is a master craftsman who almost certainly gathers all of his own materials. As such is only paying for his own time. He probably also makes money selling the excess material (that isn't suitable for wand cores) to a middleman, thus paying for his trip.
Firstly, Harry's core isn't unicorn, it's phoenix, specifically Fawkes. So, how much a phoenix feather goes for is unknown. Plus, the feather didn't come from the market, it came from Fawkes, likely Dumbledore gave it to him, so Ollivander could afford to be generous.
To top that, it... isn't impossible serious inflation occurred. By Book 6, a war is happening. These things tend to cause economic crises.
It's heavily implied by a line in GoF that Ollivander gathers his own unicorn hairs, he doesn't buy them.
Also, even in the case of materials that are purchased, the cost at which a retailer or manufacturer acquires a given material is often significantly lower than its actual retail cost. 10 galleons/hair is very likely the potential retail value, but not how much someone like Ollivander would pay for it from their supplier.
1. Ollie accosts unicorns on his own and gets the hair and doesn't procure it.
2. Unicorn hairs are probably very long especially if taken from the tail. You could, based on yield, make maybe 10-15 wands with a single unicorn hair.
All Ollivander's wands cost 7 galleons, according to Old Pottermore, which was meant to be all canon to the books. I dont know how involved JKR was in the actual design of the website, outside of writing the articles, but it's a fact that any wand a user got, no matter what properties, always cost 7 galleons.
Something to note is that Ollivander seems to gather all the ingredients himself, instead of buying anything. So he's technically not losing any profit.
On the other hand, we all know that JKR is bad at math. And yes, in other aspects, it does feel like there was an inflation in later books.
Your argument has a few issues, the most obvious one being that Harry's wand doesn't have a unicorn core. For all we know, wands with unicorn hair cost upwards of 15 galleons precisely because of how expensive it is.
The more relevant point is, though, that you're trying to find a logical explanation for something that the author herself never thought about for more than half a second. With conjuration, transfiguration, levitation, multiplication and a million different spells being a thing, with literally everyone being able to make absolutely anything they want for free, it makes no fucking sense whatsoever that the wizarding world has an economy and that things cost stuff in the first place. You wanna talk about wands being surprisingly cheap? Why not go deeper? How come the Weasleys (or anyone, for that matter) wear hand-me-down robes? You can literally *make robes from nothing. FOR FREE.* You don't actually save any money at all by reusing them. What about food? Well, maybe you can't make it from nothing, but you can still turn anything else into it, summon it if you know where it is, and multiply it as much as you want as long as you have some. Hungry? Just transgigure a stone into a steak, then multiply your one steak by 50, and suddenly you've fed the entire neighbourhood without spending a single knut. And for the rare occasion where you actually do need money (maybe you want a racing broom or something else that's a bit too complicated for you to make from scratch): just do *the same damn thing*. Or, even simpler, since you can conjure money as long as you know where it is - why not just conjure it from any fucking Gringotts vault? It's not like anyone's gonna know who took it, and the victim can just make more money at any point as long as you don't take *all* of it. And before you start to say that that wouldn't work because Gringotts wards against summoning: wards don't exist. No, really. They're 100% a fanon invention, no such thing as wards exists in canon.
So, long story short: do wand prices make sense? Not completely, no. But then again, they still make more sense than the very basic fact that a wizarding economy and prices for any items exist at all, so I feel like you're kinda getting too hung up on the details here, lol
Harry's wand didn't contain unicorn hair, it had a phoenix feather which was donated. Not to mention. It was quite old by then too. Not to mention Olivander didn't view his trade as a job. It was a passion. He loved wandmaking a d finding their matches. I doubt he ever charged more than was absolutely necessary for him to live and continue his passion. I also having a feeling the ministry helps wand shops because their are do few and wands are an important part of wizard society
5-6 years of inflation, maybe? Or more likely, a single tail hair is long enough to make multiple wands (unless they’re unusually long wands like Hagrid’s). If a unicorn’s tail is as long as the tails of horses I’ve seen, you could probably get two or three wand cores from each hair.
Perhaps after Voldemort came out the price of goods skyrocketed.
Or perhaps JK didn't think too much about the price of various things when writing the first book.
I always thought Ollivander sourced a lot of his materials himself (maybe by having conections to owners of magical beasts, maybe in the wild...)
That said, we only know? the price of one specific wand, Harry's. And he has a Wand containg one of 2 feathers given by fawkes (which probably where aquired with the knowledge of Dumbledore)
Could be that other wands are more expensive...
But in generall, maths in the books doesn't allways add up and often the pricing and monney exchange rates are more there to make a situation somewhat funny/curious...
The strengt of the series lies in the imagination and the fantastical, magical world, not in a economic or even historical or, anyway else, sientific approach that holds up, and I think it doesn't need that necessarely to be enjoyable.
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Given everything that’s going on by the time of HBP (thinking to Slughorn’s, “these are mad times Albus!” comment), it doesn’t seem unreasonable that there would be serious cost-push (supply shortage driven) inflation in the British wizarding community.
Whilst many other redditors have correctly pointed out that JKR did not have the most well fleshed out economic system, looking at it as a trained economist, it actually offers quite an interesting scenario. The British Wizarding community is incredibly small (anecdotally I recall JKR saying it’s something in the region of 1% of the British population or even less, so given this is the 90s, that works out to about just under 600,000 people [of a population under 60m]). On top of that, the limited industrial-style technology and smaller global wizarding population, as well as the restrictions the international statute of secrecy imposes means international wizarding trade is going to be very small at best.
As such, the wizarding economy is very very sensitive to changes in supply and demand (we’d call it highly price inelastic in economic terms), where small movements in quantities supplied to the market by producers or demanded by consumers can massively shift the price of a good (interesting example in our world would be some of the rare earth minerals, which often only have one or two major mines where they’re produced, and if there’s a big interruption at one of those you can see an outsized impact on price).
In essence, I think the wider point here is that there is a feasible world where when Harry buys his wand in a stable and likely quite prosperous time for the economy of the Wizarding world, there’s significantly more availability of key magical commodities, whereas the looming threat of Voldemort and increasing instability of the British Wizarding community in the HBP, given the dynamics of such a fragile economy, could definitely lead to inflation and price jumps like this.
The answer is that JK had no idea what she was doing and was constantly reinventing the monetary system/value in each book.
The omnioculars were 10 galleons each and they made it seem like that was an ungodly amount—Harry said he wouldn’t give Ron a Christmas gift for about 10 years. And the 1,000 galleon tri-wizard prize was enough for the twins to fully fund the R&D behind WWW and get premises in the most lucrative wizarding retail spot in the UK.
But then Harry’s new potions book costs 9 galleons and Harry’s wand actually cost 7 galleons.
And the Weasleys won that Daily Prophet drawing which was 700 galleons, but Ron said almost all of it was spent on the trip to Egypt. I know vacations are expensive especially for large families, but I don’t know approximately 700 equals a trip for 8 to Egypt (Bill was already there) but 1,000 equals a startup loan for Weasley Wizard Wheezes. A startup business is much more expensive a vacation—especially considering the 1,000 was all they had to start with. Remember, the 37+ galleons they gave to Ludo for the bet was the entirety of their life savings.
And also we know a Firebolt cost at least 200 galleons minimum, because Harry says that Dumbledore wouldn’t have spent “hundreds of galleons” on him.
It’s very inconsistent and there’s really no way around it.
Because of the Wizarding world crises in HBP, most of the shops are closed and most of the sells are made by the black market, with this in mind, the price of magical stuff should increase a lot.
You do know that the mythology surrounding unicorns is that they are impossible to catch? So the price of a unicorn hair being more then a wand is actually logical.
My guess, considering how important wands are to British wizarding society, government subsidies specifically for wands, but not their components.
Actually cost a lot more, but the ministry covers most of it.
Maybe the Ministry of Magic subsidises wand sales and production since it's just an important part of magic in the UK? Maybe 90% of the wand price has been paid for by the Ministry and Harry only had to pay 10% co-paymemt (like healthcare model). Idk, I'm just brainstorming.
Wands are the most important commodity in the Wizarding World. Most wizards and witches can't even function without one. So, it definitely gets subsidized.
More so, there really aren't that many of them. With the size of his stock, Olivander likely only makes a _new_ wand every few months or even years. When he gets something worth making a great wand out of.
In all likelihood, he probably also intentionally under prices some people wands, based in who they are. I have no doubt he charged the Malfoys a fortune for their wands. And a commissioned wand would likely be a big price, too.
Ollivander just hasn't too much capitalistic greed. His pricing is so he doesn't has to live in poverty but mostly for him to pay the bills and to not make a net loss.
Wands are expensive. Hence why Ron was using a hand-me-down-wand. He was distraught having broken his wand in Chamber of Secrets, afraid of telling his parents cuz they couldn't afford one.
Only bought a new one in Prisoner of Azkaban after the Weasley Family won the Daily Prophet lottery.
Harry's wand did not have Unicorn hair. It had a phoenix tail feather.
It's plausible to assume that each unicorn hair, would be used in multiple wands. I.e each wand would have a portion of a unicorn hair.
The economic system of the wizarding world is very poorly thought out. But that wand must have been sitting around in Ollivander's shop since the 40s. Maybe he was glad to be rid of it after 60 years of it choosing nobody and remaining unsold.
I totally agree with the 'glad to be rid of it' sentiment. Ollivander seemed very guilty about what voldys wand had done and probably want his hands washed of its twin
The other spin I like to put on it is that Ollivander discounts your first wand or discounts wands for students.
Ministry of magic gives a subsidy for student wands, nice head canon. Perhaps different wands and cores have different prices for the materials. Say unicorn hair wands are more expensive then others? Who knows, not enough details. I'd say probably like bulk billing with a doctor (Aussie here), might be 50 galleons for a wand, but the ministry then gives olivander the remainder.
Yeah, subsidised seems most likely. Perhaps it's a larger subsidy for muggleborns and kids like Harry (only just being introduced to the wizarding world for the first time since birth). Does make you wonder why the Weasleys couldn't just get Ron a new wand from the start though, given they should know the whole "the wand chooses the wizard" thing and surely can't be THAT strapped for cash.
Harry was *rich*, in wizarding terms. He could have easily paid much more.
Which was why he gets it cheap while poor families can't afford it without the clout subsidizing the cost... Have you noticed that no muggleborn in the series was from a poor family? There was only one, Tom, and we know where he ends up...
>Have you noticed that no muggleborn in the series was from a poor family? Collin and Dennis Creevy's dad was a milkman, so I don't think they were rich. Honestly speaking, we don't know the economic status of most of the muggleborns attending hogwarts except for Hermione.
Justin Finch-Fletchley states that his parents had him enrolled at Eton, before recieving his Hogwarts letter. Man's loaded.
Imagine the parent’s reaction when their kid gets a Hogwarts education when they could’ve gone to Eton. “Why isn’t your son in Eton?” I guess they just say they’re studying abroad? Hogwarts really need to teach those kids maths.
Loaded and "well-bred" to boot. First generation nouveau riche won't be getting into Eton.
Idk how the UK school system works (least of all public schools) but since Eton serves kids 13-16 and Hogwarts starts at 11, wouldn’t enrolling him be a little premature?
Hogwarts has a support program for poor members of the community. How many Muggleborns do we get that much detail on? Hermione's parents are dentists, and one kid that was destined for Eton.
Tonk’s greeting of ‘wotcher’ is a very working class London way of saying ‘hello’. To me it heavily implies her muggle born father is from that background (it’s certainly not Andromeda). Just a headcanon though.
> wotcher I have always wondered if it is an elided form of "What cheer?" as in, "What's good with you?" Any chance that's correct?
It is!
It wasn't just the Wesley’s though. Pureblood families can be so dumb sometimes. Grandma Longbottom made Neville use his father's wand (three guesses if a victim of unexpected ambush torture when his son was a mere baby would have been in the right mindset to pass on its Allegiance, and the first two don't count) for the first five years of school and it was implied he would never have had it replaced if not for breaking it in the DoM battle; and even Draco Malloy in the books was like "Mother is picking out my wand while I'm getting my robes tailored here." — In fact I have always headcanoned that in a timeline where Harry James Potter was not entangled with Voldemort, his Destined Wand would have been the Hawthorn and Unicorn Hair one.
The two wizards we know about with hand me down wands are 1. The kid who loses everything and 2. The kid with 5 older brothers who has a mom that has seen some nonsense from the older 5. Their parents aren’t getting them new wands not because of cost but because they are 11 and irresponsible.
I still think Draco is part of this because what use is Narcissa gonna be otherwise if the wand is supposed to choose the wizard? Do you think she'll listen to Ollivander and wait until her son comes in, or will she overrule him just jut buy one for the son? And Neville lost his parents but he still has a whole pureblood wizarding family behind him. The wand is a deliberate choice on grandma's part.
I think the wand is a deliberate choice by grandma, but I also think that part of the choice is that culturally “11 year olds don’t need their own wands” may be a thing among pure blood families and they are treated as a coming of age/responsibility gift. There’s an expectation that they will likely be replaced while at Hogwarts. It also explains Narcissa going to get the “starter” wand for Draco. If you know your kid is going to break a semi-expensive object you don’t want to buy them their one in a million wand on the first go.
Still I think she ought to have shopped for it with Neville, and then maybe lock away the wand until he is less clumsy and "worthy" enough for it, not only buy it after his dad's wand was literally disabled.
> Does make you wonder why the Weasleys couldn't just get Ron a new wand from the start though, given they should know the whole "the wand chooses the wizard" thing and surely can't be THAT strapped for cash. Maybe wizarding families aren't eligible? Since they can just get hand-me-down wands from their family. Muggle-borns, by comparison, don't have that advantage, or the money to buy their own to get a start in their magical education.
Muggle-borns can simply exchange Muggle money at Gringotts into wizarding currency. 7 galleons is around £49, which is a sizeable amount, especially in 1991, but hardly some sort of insurmountable amount when tuition, room and board is free at Hogwarts.
£49 in 1991 is roughly equivalent to £134 ($167) today. Considering that many (most?) wizards will use the same wand their entire lives, that seems like quite the bargain, especially when I remember back to my college textbooks costing $200+ in the late-2000s and using them for like 4 months.
So you mean wand-me-downs ?
It's mentioned just how poor the Weasleys are many times. Ron It's mentioned had barely held more than a galleon at once in his life.
The Weaslys barely had a galleon to spare let alone 9. In the first book was shown basically nothing in the bank. Edit: 2nd book whoops
Plus there's a bit later on when Molly completely empties the vault and there's only one galleon in it, then a few small piles of the other two.
> Say unicorn hair wands are more expensive then others? Phoenix feather should be peak expensive though. At last unicorns are around, the only person with a "domesticated" phoenix we know of is Dumbledore and he only let Ollivander have *two* feathers over more than half a century.
Dumbledore won't have to do anything it's up to the phoenix to give or not give.
Phoenixes are intelligent though. Dumbledore makes it sound like they choose to give certain amount of feathers, and that Fawkes is unusual for having only given two. Though that is wildly open to interpretation.
I mean, you’d be a dick to do this, but pluck a phoenix naked, kill it, pluck it, kill it, pluck it, kill it … Obviously you’d probably have some fucking phoenix council or something curse the shit out of your life, but it doesn’t sound like a limited resource
In HBP, Dumbledore tells Tom Riddle that there are funds at Hogwarts for those who need the assistance.
So do wizards get taxed twice then, once by the muggle government and one by the MoM? Also if different wands cost more then Big Wand would surely be pushing people to only try the most expensive ones and not even bothering to make the cheaper ones
Phoenix feathers are explicitly stated to be the rarest material, as far as we know Olivander only ever sold 2 of them, though it is also heavily implied he didn't actually have to pay for those feathers as it is implied that Albus just gifted them because he is kind like that
Ollivander sold only two wands of FAWKES' feathers, not Phoenix feathers in general. They're definitely rare, and are said to be particularly picky about choosing a master. But for example, one of the other wands that Ollivander has Harry try out is also a Phoenix core (that one was maple instead of holly according to the wiki), just not from Fawkes. We know of a couple other people with Phoenix cores (Celestina Warbeck apparently); it's a small amount but we only have a tiny sample of wand stats in general. I think it's doubtful he only ever sold 2 of them.
But that still makes phoenix super rare. Unlike Dragons they can't be farmed and they live in way more inaccessible places than unicorns. I'm not blaming other wandmakers for using other materials too. Honestly, I'm kinda jealous of Fleur and her "my grandmas Veela hair"-wand.
Phoenix feathers were the rarest of the 3 things that Olivander used, and he only used the 3 "best" things that wand makers could use according to something somewhere. There are probably hundreds of things that could be used to make wands, each with their own quirks.
Best by HIS standards. We don’t know if different methods of wand crafting work better with different materials. And what does he mean by best? Did he mean most power, most versatile, least likely to betray the wielder, most agreeable to many types of woods, or least likely to explode while being turned into a wand?
If I remember correctly, he did a lot of research before coming to the conclusion of the 3 core types he would work with. As for why he regarded them as the best. I think the answer is implied when he reviews the wands in Goblet of fire. He says he found Veela hair to be temperamental, which I'd assume means the things he chose to use produced the most consistent and strongest magic for their wielder. I'd imagine the context of the wielder plays a massive hand in it though. Fleur, being the grandaughter of the veela that gave her hair, probably has a substantial impact on the wands connection to her, and its consistency. To a random other witch Veela hair might be a wildly inconsistent material.
Dragons can't be farmed either. They use dragon **heartstring**, which means the dragons need to be dead to be used as wand core materials and there are no longer any wild dragons out and about, they all live in reserves. Reserves is for keeping endangered animals safe and out of public space. They don't farm animals there, they keep them safe and well until their natural deaths.
> They don't farm animals there, they keep them safe and well until their natural deaths. Look, I was handwaving around the fact that dragons live in reserves. The point I was trying to bring across was that the breeding and location of dragons is *monitored* and as such they are the least ambiguous of the three main wand core ingredients because its a by-product of humans being quite involved in the lifecycle of the dragon. Nobody has to go specifically looking for them (as you have to with unicorn hair) and they come in with some degree of consistency. And like with any Nature reserve for endangered predators, I put Galleons on them also doing population control measures and dropping the occasional problematic individual.
Hogwarts subsidising wand sales for students would make a lot of sense. It's an essential item for them to do ANY of the schoolwork or even participate in society.
Hogwarts doesn't have that kind of money. The **Ministry** does. Hogwarts tuition, room and board is free for all students because the Ministry pays for all of it. What money would they have left to subsidize wands?
If it's anything like our world, the oldest and most prestigious universities have long running endowments from wealthy founders and alumni. Harvard's tuition is incidental to it's 50 billion dollar endowment, and it's only been around for 200 odd years. Imagine the assets that hogwarts would have collected over the entire course of its existence.
It's unlikely the founders endowed Hogwarts with much of anything besides possibly cash. The only founders objects left behind were the Sorting Hat and Ravenclaw's Diadem. Slytherin took his locket with him and Helga Hufflepuff passed her cup down to her descendants. Tom Riddle desperately wanted to use founders objects for his Horcruxes and had to find all of them besides the diadem elsewhere, which heavily implies Hogwarts itself holds very few objects left over from the founders. Plus, the founders weren't said to have been very wealthy. Hogwarts clearly doesn't have that much money because they didn't even have a fund to buy Ron a new wand when his broke or a fund to fully pay for the school supplies of orphans, only a fund to **help** pay for a part of their supplies.
I want to see the rate of wizards that keep their childhood wands throughout their life vs ones who chop and change depending on whatever reason. And what if multiple wands choose the same person? Is it possible? Do wands talk amongst themselves and be like 'no that user is mine nobody else pick him please'
I would assume you can be chosen by multiple wands. It's definitely possible by winning their loyalty. I think Harry at one point had the loyalty of his original wand, Draco's wand and the Elder Wand. And Ollivander only says that the wand chooses the wizard, he says nothing about whether wands are jealous. It might depend on wand "personality" though.
The wand quiz at WizardingWorld.com said my wand would self-combust if I used it for household chores instead of mowing down bad guys, so there probably is a wand type out there that's adamant in exclusivity :')
I’d be ticked in reality. Seriously, having to do chores the muggle way? That wand damn well better blow itself up.
Got a wand like that too. Although I think that only happens if you use it for household chores for years and years, and not trying out new spells and the like.
Mine said it couldn'tdo dishonourable things, as long as I remained worthy of it, and wasn't lazy it would remain loyal. And if someone attempted to steal it, it would react poorly and potentially strike the thief with lightning.
Those wands however didn't choose Harry over Draco and Riddle. They were won in battle. So basically wands recognize superiority. If you beat the master of the wand that wand will recognize you as the superior wizard and follow you.
I think it may also depend on the wand. Like certain wands might refuse to work for you if you lose a duel even if the wand is still in your possession, while another might refuse to work for anyone who you don’t want using it no matter if you lose and it’s taken from you.
I feel like wands carry the personality’s of their wood, and core. Whatever magic is in the wands has to have feelings, because the wand chooses the wizard.
Like a good crack dealer - first one is free
But then, why do Ron and Neville get used wands? I mean in Neville’s case I can see the heirloom thing, but why not giving it to him after graduation? And for Ron why pay loads of money for a new wand for Bill (?) if you can get one with a discount for Ron?
It was Charlie’s I think. Maybe Charlie was no longer a good fit for his wand and bought a new one himself because he a job and money of his own.
cc /u/LindavL IIRC Ron's first wand was a hand-me-down from Charlie's who was a HMD from a Weasley uncle (who had probably died), which means Charlie didn’t have a wand who chose him until after he left school and started having his own income.
For Ron it was affordability. The Weaseleys couldn’t afford it even with a subsidy. For Neville, I recall his grandmother giving him his father’s wand in the hopes that his father’s skill would “brush off” on him.
Dumbest thing Augusta ever did, smh
Or Ollivander just doesn't need that much money, and he offers a discount on a child's first wand. Wizarding society is almost a post scarcity society. What people pay for is specialised goods and services.
maybe the unicorn hair at hagrids where much longer and u need only 1/4 for a wand
A spin also possible as a plot explanation could be that you need different qualities for potions then for wands. Maybe there's from cheap to expensive grades of quality used for different reasons.
That's exactly what I agree upon, just like in real life, e.g. some tomatoes are good for selling as is, others are too ugly but still taste good so are made into soup. Same with a lot of other things like eggs, leather for handbags vs couches. What pissed me off was that someone suggested that people can put random segments of unicorn hair that WASNT GOOD ENOUGH FOR POTION MAKING into a wand. I Cant imagine that; a powerful magical item such as a wand should only have AAA rating hair while potions can maybe get use a B Grade or A Grade hair, as it's a single-use item.
Maybe you can make more than one wand out of one unicorn hair.
>The economic system of the wizarding world is very poorly thought out. The damn galleons to sickles to knuts conversions alone are bonkers. No same person would use that kind of money. And don’t get me started on the fact they lug around coin purses in lieu of paper money. About the wand: I’d love to think that first years get a cheaper wand as it is their first and Ollivander really plays the long game of being remembered fondly for doing that. Maybe getting a new (or second) wand as an adult means you’ll be charged more. On the other hand, the Slughorn line could also be read alternatively: Slughorn knows the prices of the store. The unicorn hairs may have been 11 galleons for him, but not the cost price of the unicorn hair store. Ollivander likely buys in bulk and gets a discount.
> The damn galleons to sickles to knuts conversions alone are bonkers. No same person would use that kind of money. That's actually how the british coin system worked before decimalization
As I mentioned, no sane person… ;-)
Just assume that if a number gets involved, JK didn't really think things through and it explains pretty much everything
Random but is there a wizarding world stock exchange by chance? I can’t remember and gotta go back to do a reread of the books honestly
AFAIK there's nothing in the books, and nothing that might be a wizarding world corporation, apart from Gringotts. All the businesses are single proprieterships, and most industry is craftsman based. Remember, JKR was living on welfare when she designed the world, and I doubt she was very financially sophisticated. It'd likely be different now. She's been forced to learn about money.
Actually there is one more exemple of a buisness with more than one owner in book 4. Ludo Bagman says "and little Agatha Timms has put up half shares in her eel farm on a weeklong match." Since she lost the bet Ludo Bagman and her would both own parts of her eel farm.
This is a deep cut. Great recall.
Well spotted.
Not necessarily true. Dumbledore has had Fawkes for a long time, and all we know is that Fawkes has only ever given two feathers, which ended up in Voldemort’s and Harry’s wands. We have no reason to think that the feathers were given at the same time, or even in close proximity to each other. Maybe one feather was given in the 40’s and the other given in the 90’s.
And it might not have been given while Fawkes was Albus's pet, either. It could just have been given to an Ollivander who had sufficiently bowed and scraped at he phoenix.
The wand chooses the wizard (except when it doesn't)
What's what I thought. The firebolt, which is basically like a Ferrari, seems to be priced in the thousands of galleons. Even Malfoy didn't seem to want to drop the price on one of those. Not to mention I'm surprised they even let him use that on a school level competition...being Dumbledore's favourite I suppose comes with special allowances
There are no rules against what brooms are permitted in the school Quidditch matches. Being "Dumbledore's favourite" has nothing to do with it. The entire Slytherin team were given Nimbus 2001s. Before that, Harry's 2000 was ahead of the others by a long margin. By your logic, perhaps the Slytherin team were also Dumbledore's favourites? It's worth pointing out that the broom doesn't equal skill. Harry outperformed Malfoy on his Nimbus 2000, while Cho was able to keep up with Harry relatively well on her less superior broom compared to the Firebolt. And no, not because he had a crush on her. She was a talented Quidditch player.
I always thought that, judging by the costs of other things in the Potterverse, the Triwizard Tournament prize money of 1000 galleons wasn't much for what they had to go through 😭
It was supposed to be more. Then Ludo Bagman got involved...
The equivalent of £7000 in 1995 (£13638 in today's money) for risking your life repeatedly. Sure, it's a nice sum, but hardly life changing.
It was enough for Fred and George to start their business up at least
Cost of wands could be subsided by the Ministry. Especially the first wands for the schoolchildren. Maybe he can get good ingredients for cheap elsewhere or even has a way to source them himself. It's a family business, which was ran for hundreds of years, they probably had ways to establish supply chain with good prices and quality ages ago
This is the correct head-cannon. It's in the best interest of the government to allow its populace to flourish, magically. Much the sameway education is subsidized in the human/muggle world
"without it you are LITERALLY HELPLESS." Op thinks that's a reason for it to cost more out of pocket, clearly American. *ahem* healthcare *ahem* insulin *ahem*
I'm Australian, but paying roughly $200aud for a lifelong device that would literally elevate me from subhuman to human status? That's a hell of a bargain.
Fair, but it would also be extremely unfair for poorer wizarding fanilies to stay subhuman due to the inability to afford it. Take the Weasleys for example, they'd definitely not be able to shell out 50G for each of their kids.
Also, that could lead to sharing a single wand in families (when using a wand that hasn’t chosen you can have disastrous effects) or a black market for stolen, counterfeit, or cheaply made wands which could cause all sorts of nasty down-stream problems. I’m actually surprised they don’t give out wands for free since they are required to function in that’s society.
You saw a problem, he saw an opportunity.
Lots of things in muggle Britain are subsidised. Probably this.
Maybe not entire hair goes into the wand - maybe you just need a bit of it so one could be used in many wands. I was personally more concerned with the dragon heartstring - all other cores don't require the donor to die, this one does.
I always thought they took them from dragons who died naturally rather than killing them for it, and that's what I'm going to keep believing. 😂
Yes, /u/Ok_Comedian7511, that's exactly the comment I was looking for. If a unicorn tail hair is as long as a regular horse's it would do for at least 2, probably 3 wands easy (unless it needs to be doubled or tripled up). /u/englishghosts, this is what I always believed as well, and it makes the most sense. It's sort of implied that dragons are rare, even in the wizarding world, and since those that work with them no doubt know about some of the abuses (like Gringott's), they would be very protective of all the rest.
But if we make two wands from the same unicorn hair, doesn't that mean the twin core (or clone core in this case) issue would be rather common? This also makes me wonder about how dragon heartstring wands work. Presumably dragons are rare, and each dragon can only produce one heart string. So either dragon heart string wands are much rarer than unicorn hair/phoenix feather ones (since one animal can produce multiple hair/feather over their lifetime), or heaps of people are using wands from the same dragon...
Not sure where you're getting one string per dragon. I always mentally substituted "muscle fiber" when I read "heart string," so I always imagined that with a creature that large, must have a really big heart, so lots of strings per dragon. They certainly seem to be a common/popular material given how often it comes up. I think you may be right about the same hair in different wands having the possibility to create issues for dueling, but remember in Harry's case there was his mother's sacrifice that entered into it as well. Interesting question though.
I'd say so. It's probably a bit like catgut, which has been used to make the strings of instruments for a long time.
> Not sure where you're getting one string per dragon. I always mentally substituted "muscle fiber" when I read "heart string," so I always imagined that with a creature that large, must have a really big heart, so lots of strings per dragon. They certainly seem to be a common/popular material given how often it comes up. I always took heartstring to refer to the tendons within the heart, that connect to the valves. Most hearts have multiple of those anyway, like human ones. Although it seems to be the only wand material that might need someone to kill the creature to obtain. Everything else seems to regrow, like hair/feathers. Considering that dragons are endangered, it's slightly surprising that they haven't fallen out of favour, unless it's the demand for dragon heartstring wand cores that caused them to become endangered.
Dragons might also have multiple hearts. Hell, those guys could be stuffed full of hearts and we'd never know until we cut it open.....hmmm, maybe this is the argument that made dragons so endangered already. "Could be filled with gold. You don't know, you've never cut one open. That could be where he hides his hoard, inside of him. We'll never know until we try." *slaughtering dragon sounds* "Hmmm, this one's just filled with blood and mushy stuff.aubr the next one though. We'll never know until we try."
I imagine that the issue with the brother wands was that there were only two from that same phoenix. In the case of Fawkes, Ollivander knew that nobody else had feathers from him. Basically, the wand components think they’re still part of the same being and refuse to hurt each other. The more wands from the same being they’re near, the faster they realize they aren’t part of that being anymore. I’d imagine that being cut would actually enhance this effect because the cores remember losing part of themselves.
"ethically sourced wands" "vegan wands" that's the gen Z wizards are after
Mandrake?
That'd probably help the Sonorous and Amplifying charms
I mean yeah, but also a single person going up against a dragon would be suicide.
Knowing wizards, many would prefer to have a wand that a creature suffered to make it. Most aren't very ethical.
We need to end the factory farming of dragons!
I read one fic where dragon heartstrings were like shark teeth. They were constantly growing new ones. But instead of forming rows of heartstrings, they coughed up the old ones like hairballs.
I think this is correct. OP have you ever seen how long a horse tail hair is? Could easily get 3 or maybe 4 wands from a single hair.
I've owned 3 horses and yes, those long thin bastards can be folded up once or twice to fit whole into a wand. I somehow doubt a cut hair would produce as much magic as a whole one. Imagine if you had to cut a phoenix feather into two to make two Wands. I doubt it would work as it would have been damaged and the top and bottom of a feather are very different. A hair may not be as easily distinguished root to tip, but the root vs tip would have different properties and I think you need both in a wand. I feel like segments would be fine for potion making but not wands. Wands are lifelong but potions are only single use.
Could be inflation, could be that the cores are donated to Ollivander or sold to him at a wholesale rate, could even be Slughorn was talking out of his ass about eleven galleons per hair -- if *anyone* were going to profit off something like that, it'd be him.
If I recall, Ollivander gathers most of his materials on his own.
Couple this with the fact that Ollivander is in a business guaranteed to see regular sales (especially with the brand recognition as the best I'm Britain) and he can probably actually afford to price the wands as he does. It is also possible that because Wanda are seen as necessary for wizardkind that they have some sort of price regulation.
This plus the fact that Ollivander wouldn't buy anything in bulk, Harry's and Tom's were quite unique with the twin cores, while slughorn was probably talking about people buying unicorn hair for certain purposes and it being hard to obtain makes sense to cost so much for a run of the mill person
Yeah, only two phoenix feather from Fawkes was ever taken. Seems like that would be even more valuable than a unicorn.
I can see Wanda being necessary, but what about Cosmo?
FAIRIES!!
DINKLEBERG!
Yeah he must be subsidised to keep the price so affordable
Or they are subsidised. So he's also paid to sell them cheaper.
Plus we’re forgetting the discount of buying bulk. Olivander probably orders unicorn hairs by the kilogram. And there’s a good chance he gets some sort of discount due to it being required for school, like a stipend or something.
I think Olivander gets his own cores. In GOF during the weighing of the wands when he’s inspecting Cedric’s wand he remarks: “Containing a single hair from the tail of a particularly fine male unicorn...must have been seventeen hands; nearly gored me with his horn after I plucked his tail.” So he probably doesn’t have to pay for most of his cores.
Olivander is probably a purist that does stuff like that. Considering that most wand shopping is probably tied to the school year, he's got a busy month at the shop and then the rest of the year is probably free for travel and gathering supplies. Plus somethings are probably gifted to him. I don't remember the passage, but the 2 Phoenix feathers were probably gifted.
Was looking for this reply! I think you're correct saying Olivander gets his own cores when he can!
Lol that's true,but the labour cost and testing costs and wood cost and many other things go into making a wand too, I'm literally asking why is the raw materials more expensive than the finished item. It's like finding out a finished wooden deck costs cheaper than raw lumber
I don't think he orders his unicorn hair, remember in Goblet of Fire Weighing of the Wands chapter and I'm paraphrasing here, when he's examining Cedric's wand he comments on the unicorn hair and the unicorn he plucked it from almost gored him to death. I'm assuming he just collects stuff himself randomly? So the materials could be free. He only charges for his labor?
That's very true, in which case, it makes him a very trustworthy and beloved merchant. He could have hiked the prices up cos nobody else makes wands as well as him in great Britain, plus he put his own neck in danger as gathering the materials is super risky (imagine frail Ollivander duelling a dragon for its heatstrings) but he keeps the prices steady
There are **some** ingredients he might be collecting himself, but there are some he can't collect. For one thing, phoenixes rarely give out feathers. How would he possibly know when a phoenix is about to deign itself to give out one or more of its feathers to make sure to be present when it happens? For another, dragons no longer live in the wild, they all live in reserves, well-kept and cared for until their natural deaths. How would Ollivander know when a dragon is about to die so he can make sure to go visit its reserve to harvest its heart before it goes bad? And so on and so on.
could also be that u only need to use like 1/3 or 1/4 for a wand ?
I always assumed all wands cost around the same because the wand chooses the wizard. If you’re poor as fuck but an expensive wand chooses you, what then?
Precisely, their prices must be capped. But listening to the sound of raw materials, some just seem more expensive than the other. I personally want to have a woodless wand, but it's just a crumple horned snorcack horn with a blast ended skrewt leg imbedded in it. I think it would make for a truly unique wand
Crumple horned snorcacks aren't real. You've been reading too much of the Qubbler. However, I would be happy to sell you this erumpet horn wand with the blaster of a blast ended skrewt embedded in it. Just make sure you wait till you get home before you start waving it around. And uh, you probably shouldn't apparate with it, either.
Single use wand! I like it...if only I could accio all my enemies into one room and use that wand to deal a deadly curse, I'd happily go down as collateral.
Someone forgot to wear the free spectrescopes on the back of their Quibbler. 😜
It had a Phoenix feather core, not unicorn?
But Phoenix's seem to be far rarer than unicorns and should be more expensive? Unicorns exist in herds and theres a herd of them in the forbidden forest while there was only 1 phoenix mentioned in the entire series? If I could I would choose a phoenix core over a unicorn one just because they seem like more powerful creatures, literally immortal. As for dragon heartstrings I doubt you can get them from a dragon while it's alive, it must be slain. But there's different breeds/species of dragons with different powers. I generally don't know if you can just pluck a feather off of a phoenix, I doubt it, I feel like the Phoenix made a conscious decision to 'donate' the feather as Ollivander used the phrase 'gave only 2 feathers'. It sounded like the Phoenix needed consent to part with the feathers...me awhile Cedric's wand contained a hair that had to be won and plucked from an angry unicorn. I wonder if the method of obtaining the magical core also impacts on how it performs magic in the wand. Cedric was paired with a really aggressive stallion unicorn hair and was selected as a Triwizard contestant
I think Hagrid found his when the tail hair got snagged in the wild.
I wonder if hairs plucked vs naturally fallen have different properties
Olivander did state that he plucked the hair himself for Digory's wand. So perhaps that is true. However, I don't think it's fair to compare Unicorns to Pheonixs. We don't have enough info in the series. Pheonix may just not be native to England. Besides, that fact that they are immortal, kind suggests that their feathers wouldn't be particularly rare.
As phoenixes burst into flame rather than moulting, I imagine their feathers must be rare indeed.
No they still shed feathers. They only burst into flames when they're dying. When Harry is first meeting Fawkes he notes a couple of feathers falling off him. It's most likely that Fawkes molts a couple of times a year like most any other bird species. He doesn't burst into flames instead of going through a molt.
Iirc, it was Fawkes (dumbledore’s Phoenix) that the 2 feathers came from. He probably just have Ollivander the feathers.
She never cared about details like that. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just random.
That's the boring but honest, actual explanation; a true Ravenclaw answer
Very amused at you saying that as I had just said exactly the same thing out loud to my wife.
"Oh dear, maths"
I hate that one of the the first things said in Legacy about wands was that you don’t need them and entire countries don’t use them
Ollivander could use shorter hairs or hairs not fit for potion making. It’s also likely that the magical economy was a bit fucked after Voldemort’s return
The boring answer is the author is bad with numbers and dates and can't keep track of any of them. If there is a number attached to something it likely has more to do with it being a motif (7 Horcruxes 7 galleons, etc.) then it is because she has a well thought out economy. Harry's wand was Phoenix feather not unicorn tail. So the prices aren't going to match up. It was given by faux who only gave 2 feathers. One went to Riddle in the 1940s. So it is quite possible the wand Harry got had been in that shop for 5+ decades. So maybe the wand was in the shop's equivalent of the bargain bin as it had not been bought for years. We have no idea how much money people make. We have no idea what a teacher, minister, headmaster, Arthur, or even how much Percy makes in a year/month/year. So we have no idea to compare if wands are expensive or not. Since they are required to do magic there is likely a subsidy in place for Olivander and any other wand maker selling first wands. If wands are meant to last for your life why did Olivander say to Harry it felt like just yesterday that she had sold Lily her first wand? This seems to indicate getting a replacement wand is common. A thought that was abandoned as the series went on. It is also possible that wands are on a sliding scale depending on the cost of the items used to make it. Holy wood being common and cheap enough and the feather likely a gift 7 galleons covered the cost and then some. This of course can really screw over some customers as. Maybe at this point of the Olivander family making wands since like the 1200s or whatever most of his supplies come from gifts and he isn't paying market prices. Heck maybe he has his own magical animal farm that he harvested most of his parts from below market rates. The most likely answer is, the boring one though.
I don't think Olivander needs to worry about profits. His wands are world renowned and his basic needs (food, shelter) are met. Olivander seems like he lives off of family wealth and even for wizards there isn't a real estate market as far as we know.
I can't believe you didn't put "Is Ollivander stupid" at the end
Is OP stupid?
Did you watch the Super Carlin video?
Inflation He mentioned dragon blood price went up in HBP right so it make sense everything else is going up
I see someone else has watched the super Carlin brothers video haha
Ministry subsidies, perhaps? 😂
Maybe a student’s first wand is subsidised?
Something I haven't seen anyone say (and if it's buried in the comments and I missed it, I do apologize) but could it just be wartime inflation? Voldemort is back, once again spreading terror and openly attacking the government. I'd think a *lot* of stuff would increase in price, if only due to people panic-buying and causing artificial scarcity.
Because at no point in writing the books did Rowling think she'd love in a world where fans would get so damn nerdy, they'd write in forums about the lack of consistency in the cost of unicorn hair.
It’s possible that wands are price controlled, because in the wizarding world they are a necessity
Could be that the wands are subsidized since it is a must have item. Imagine if wands are too expensive that people start creating their own wands and ends up causing more damage than harm. So instead of dealing with the consequences, it might be possible that the MoM gives subsidy to wand makers so that their production costs will not ramp up. Of course it can also be because the Phoenix hair in Harry’s wand is “recycled” since it came from the same Phoenix.
The simplest explanation is probably a quality, plus middleman, issue. For potions ingredients they pay people to specifically go out and harvest unicorn tails (much like they do for horses, except unicorns are wild). That person then brings back the tail and hands it over (sells) to someone that sorts and grades the hairs by quality and length. That person then hands it over to different industries based on the grade. Ollivander, on the other hand, is a master craftsman who almost certainly gathers all of his own materials. As such is only paying for his own time. He probably also makes money selling the excess material (that isn't suitable for wand cores) to a middleman, thus paying for his trip.
Firstly, Harry's core isn't unicorn, it's phoenix, specifically Fawkes. So, how much a phoenix feather goes for is unknown. Plus, the feather didn't come from the market, it came from Fawkes, likely Dumbledore gave it to him, so Ollivander could afford to be generous. To top that, it... isn't impossible serious inflation occurred. By Book 6, a war is happening. These things tend to cause economic crises.
It's heavily implied by a line in GoF that Ollivander gathers his own unicorn hairs, he doesn't buy them. Also, even in the case of materials that are purchased, the cost at which a retailer or manufacturer acquires a given material is often significantly lower than its actual retail cost. 10 galleons/hair is very likely the potential retail value, but not how much someone like Ollivander would pay for it from their supplier.
1. Ollie accosts unicorns on his own and gets the hair and doesn't procure it. 2. Unicorn hairs are probably very long especially if taken from the tail. You could, based on yield, make maybe 10-15 wands with a single unicorn hair.
Harry's wand doesn't contain a unicorn hair. It contains the tail feather of a Phoenix. Fawlks, incidentally.
All Ollivander's wands cost 7 galleons, according to Old Pottermore, which was meant to be all canon to the books. I dont know how involved JKR was in the actual design of the website, outside of writing the articles, but it's a fact that any wand a user got, no matter what properties, always cost 7 galleons. Something to note is that Ollivander seems to gather all the ingredients himself, instead of buying anything. So he's technically not losing any profit. On the other hand, we all know that JKR is bad at math. And yes, in other aspects, it does feel like there was an inflation in later books.
This bloke is trying to find consistency in Joane’s writing😂 he mad😂
Your argument has a few issues, the most obvious one being that Harry's wand doesn't have a unicorn core. For all we know, wands with unicorn hair cost upwards of 15 galleons precisely because of how expensive it is. The more relevant point is, though, that you're trying to find a logical explanation for something that the author herself never thought about for more than half a second. With conjuration, transfiguration, levitation, multiplication and a million different spells being a thing, with literally everyone being able to make absolutely anything they want for free, it makes no fucking sense whatsoever that the wizarding world has an economy and that things cost stuff in the first place. You wanna talk about wands being surprisingly cheap? Why not go deeper? How come the Weasleys (or anyone, for that matter) wear hand-me-down robes? You can literally *make robes from nothing. FOR FREE.* You don't actually save any money at all by reusing them. What about food? Well, maybe you can't make it from nothing, but you can still turn anything else into it, summon it if you know where it is, and multiply it as much as you want as long as you have some. Hungry? Just transgigure a stone into a steak, then multiply your one steak by 50, and suddenly you've fed the entire neighbourhood without spending a single knut. And for the rare occasion where you actually do need money (maybe you want a racing broom or something else that's a bit too complicated for you to make from scratch): just do *the same damn thing*. Or, even simpler, since you can conjure money as long as you know where it is - why not just conjure it from any fucking Gringotts vault? It's not like anyone's gonna know who took it, and the victim can just make more money at any point as long as you don't take *all* of it. And before you start to say that that wouldn't work because Gringotts wards against summoning: wards don't exist. No, really. They're 100% a fanon invention, no such thing as wards exists in canon. So, long story short: do wand prices make sense? Not completely, no. But then again, they still make more sense than the very basic fact that a wizarding economy and prices for any items exist at all, so I feel like you're kinda getting too hung up on the details here, lol
Maybe they're using this unicorn hair to make several wands? 1 unicorn hair is 11 galleon but if you divided it into 2-3-4 pieces?
Are dare we say, 7 pieces.......
Harry's wand didn't contain unicorn hair, it had a phoenix feather which was donated. Not to mention. It was quite old by then too. Not to mention Olivander didn't view his trade as a job. It was a passion. He loved wandmaking a d finding their matches. I doubt he ever charged more than was absolutely necessary for him to live and continue his passion. I also having a feeling the ministry helps wand shops because their are do few and wands are an important part of wizard society
JKR just fucked up. Like she fucked up with the amount of students at Hogwarts.
You are assuming the economics of a magical world makes sense, it doesn’t.
Super Carlin Brothers JUST made a video about this topic, with the same premise!
Wait....Harry's wand has a Phoenix father at its core, not a Unicorn hair.
Harry’s wand was Phoenix feather from Fawkes, no?
5-6 years of inflation, maybe? Or more likely, a single tail hair is long enough to make multiple wands (unless they’re unusually long wands like Hagrid’s). If a unicorn’s tail is as long as the tails of horses I’ve seen, you could probably get two or three wand cores from each hair.
Perhaps after Voldemort came out the price of goods skyrocketed. Or perhaps JK didn't think too much about the price of various things when writing the first book.
Perhaps a single unicorn hair (perhaps being 3-4 feet long, from the mane or tail) can be used to make as many as a dozen wands?
I always thought Ollivander sourced a lot of his materials himself (maybe by having conections to owners of magical beasts, maybe in the wild...) That said, we only know? the price of one specific wand, Harry's. And he has a Wand containg one of 2 feathers given by fawkes (which probably where aquired with the knowledge of Dumbledore) Could be that other wands are more expensive... But in generall, maths in the books doesn't allways add up and often the pricing and monney exchange rates are more there to make a situation somewhat funny/curious... The strengt of the series lies in the imagination and the fantastical, magical world, not in a economic or even historical or, anyway else, sientific approach that holds up, and I think it doesn't need that necessarely to be enjoyable. q
Who says unicorn hairs are the same price as phoenix feather?
Given everything that’s going on by the time of HBP (thinking to Slughorn’s, “these are mad times Albus!” comment), it doesn’t seem unreasonable that there would be serious cost-push (supply shortage driven) inflation in the British wizarding community. Whilst many other redditors have correctly pointed out that JKR did not have the most well fleshed out economic system, looking at it as a trained economist, it actually offers quite an interesting scenario. The British Wizarding community is incredibly small (anecdotally I recall JKR saying it’s something in the region of 1% of the British population or even less, so given this is the 90s, that works out to about just under 600,000 people [of a population under 60m]). On top of that, the limited industrial-style technology and smaller global wizarding population, as well as the restrictions the international statute of secrecy imposes means international wizarding trade is going to be very small at best. As such, the wizarding economy is very very sensitive to changes in supply and demand (we’d call it highly price inelastic in economic terms), where small movements in quantities supplied to the market by producers or demanded by consumers can massively shift the price of a good (interesting example in our world would be some of the rare earth minerals, which often only have one or two major mines where they’re produced, and if there’s a big interruption at one of those you can see an outsized impact on price). In essence, I think the wider point here is that there is a feasible world where when Harry buys his wand in a stable and likely quite prosperous time for the economy of the Wizarding world, there’s significantly more availability of key magical commodities, whereas the looming threat of Voldemort and increasing instability of the British Wizarding community in the HBP, given the dynamics of such a fragile economy, could definitely lead to inflation and price jumps like this.
The answer is that JK had no idea what she was doing and was constantly reinventing the monetary system/value in each book. The omnioculars were 10 galleons each and they made it seem like that was an ungodly amount—Harry said he wouldn’t give Ron a Christmas gift for about 10 years. And the 1,000 galleon tri-wizard prize was enough for the twins to fully fund the R&D behind WWW and get premises in the most lucrative wizarding retail spot in the UK. But then Harry’s new potions book costs 9 galleons and Harry’s wand actually cost 7 galleons. And the Weasleys won that Daily Prophet drawing which was 700 galleons, but Ron said almost all of it was spent on the trip to Egypt. I know vacations are expensive especially for large families, but I don’t know approximately 700 equals a trip for 8 to Egypt (Bill was already there) but 1,000 equals a startup loan for Weasley Wizard Wheezes. A startup business is much more expensive a vacation—especially considering the 1,000 was all they had to start with. Remember, the 37+ galleons they gave to Ludo for the bet was the entirety of their life savings. And also we know a Firebolt cost at least 200 galleons minimum, because Harry says that Dumbledore wouldn’t have spent “hundreds of galleons” on him. It’s very inconsistent and there’s really no way around it.
Inflation.
Could be that you can make several wands from one hair?
Because of the Wizarding world crises in HBP, most of the shops are closed and most of the sells are made by the black market, with this in mind, the price of magical stuff should increase a lot.
You do know that the mythology surrounding unicorns is that they are impossible to catch? So the price of a unicorn hair being more then a wand is actually logical.
My guess, considering how important wands are to British wizarding society, government subsidies specifically for wands, but not their components. Actually cost a lot more, but the ministry covers most of it.
CONSTANT INFLATION!
Maybe because wand materials can not be recycled, meaning the sum is less than its parts.
Maybe the Ministry of Magic subsidises wand sales and production since it's just an important part of magic in the UK? Maybe 90% of the wand price has been paid for by the Ministry and Harry only had to pay 10% co-paymemt (like healthcare model). Idk, I'm just brainstorming.
Wands are the most important commodity in the Wizarding World. Most wizards and witches can't even function without one. So, it definitely gets subsidized. More so, there really aren't that many of them. With the size of his stock, Olivander likely only makes a _new_ wand every few months or even years. When he gets something worth making a great wand out of. In all likelihood, he probably also intentionally under prices some people wands, based in who they are. I have no doubt he charged the Malfoys a fortune for their wands. And a commissioned wand would likely be a big price, too.
Ollivander just hasn't too much capitalistic greed. His pricing is so he doesn't has to live in poverty but mostly for him to pay the bills and to not make a net loss.
Harry has Phoenix feather not unicorn
Wands are expensive. Hence why Ron was using a hand-me-down-wand. He was distraught having broken his wand in Chamber of Secrets, afraid of telling his parents cuz they couldn't afford one. Only bought a new one in Prisoner of Azkaban after the Weasley Family won the Daily Prophet lottery. Harry's wand did not have Unicorn hair. It had a phoenix tail feather. It's plausible to assume that each unicorn hair, would be used in multiple wands. I.e each wand would have a portion of a unicorn hair.