Beautifully written and well worth a read if you've got a few minutes to spare.
Don’t get me wrong I love the work of W. Eugene Smith, but when I was studying it was brought up that some people didn’t agree with him as a straight photojournalist, due to how much he manipulated his images.
https://petapixel.com/2015/01/26/w-eugene-smith-considered-darkroom-work-90-photos-creation-process/
There are some grammatical errors that looks like the article was scanned and ran through an OCR of some sort but contextually, you still can make out what the correct word should be.
I never said it made sense. My guess is that wizards have an easier time of getting their hands on precious metals and have agreed not to flood the Muggle market to avoid tanking the economy back in the time when the British pound followed the gold standard, so Gringott's and other banks like it operate on an exchange. I don't know where the 'spare' value goes.
JK Rowling confirmed that a Galleon was 'about' five British pounds, and some of the original side material had the wizarding currency listed on the back. In the opening to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Dumbledore says "Comic Relief has raised 174 million pounds since 1985 (thirty-four million, eight hundred and seventy-two Galleons, fourteen Sickles and seven Knuts)."
That's roughly $244m. $250m at the time of writing. Some sloppy math on my part says that means Galleons are about seven, not six, dollars.
Awesome!
If it helps, there are at least two different versions of the story.
The first was published in 1990 in a San Francisco MOMA exhibition called "Visionary San Francisco" and may or may not still exist in any format at all.
The second is a "slightly different" version originally published in OMNI Magazine's November 1991 issue. That version was later republished in this anthology in 1992 as well as another anthology called After Yesterday's Crash published in 1995.
This claims to be the text of the second version- I have no way of verifying whether that's accurate or if it's the complete text, though I'm reading it anyway...
If possible, I'd love a copy of the first version, assuming it exists. If not, a verifiable copy of the second.
Here is a larger version of the illustration shown on the wikipedia page.