There’s another big pile of gold, about 7,000 tonnes, in the New York Fed—that’s actually where a lot of foreign countries keep a large fraction of their gold supply. It’s open to tourists and you can walk in and look at the big stacks of gold bars. It does have fairly impressive security, but that security could plausibly be defeated by a reasonably competent wizard.
More to the point, whatever security Muggle vaults had 100 or 200 years ago definitely wouldn’t have stood up to wizards. (Their powers wane by the year, while ours wax.) Since all the Muggle gold didn’t vanish long ago, there must be a different explanation than Muggle vault security.
Possibly, but why couldn’t it have happened prior? There was plenty of gold around in the ancient world, and not enough of it got stolen. Nor is enough sitting in the wizarding economy.
Muggle society could hire wizards to punish thieves.
Wizards would know more muggles personally.
Maybe there really were fortunes made in those days, and it was covered up on our end. (Small fortunes, because muggles hadn’t had time to mine as much gold?)
There’s another big pile of gold, about 7,000 tonnes, in the New York Fed—that’s actually where a lot of foreign countries keep a large fraction of their gold supply. It’s open to tourists and you can walk in and look at the big stacks of gold bars. It does have fairly impressive security, but that security could plausibly be defeated by a reasonably competent wizard.
More to the point, whatever security Muggle vaults had 100 or 200 years ago definitely wouldn’t have stood up to wizards. (Their powers wane by the year, while ours wax.) Since all the Muggle gold didn’t vanish long ago, there must be a different explanation than Muggle vault security.
I think that a lot of the Hogwarts Founders and Merlin stuff was actually setting things up so stuff like this wouldn’t happen.
Possibly, but why couldn’t it have happened prior? There was plenty of gold around in the ancient world, and not enough of it got stolen. Nor is enough sitting in the wizarding economy.
The statute of secrecy also didn’t exist back then.
What are the relevant implications of that? I’m not coming up with any.
Muggle society could hire wizards to punish thieves.
Wizards would know more muggles personally.
Maybe there really were fortunes made in those days, and it was covered up on our end. (Small fortunes, because muggles hadn’t had time to mine as much gold?)