2) What will be Harry's new home and lifestyle be in Chicago? Is he going to find an apartment and go back to being a detective or will it be something very different
For fun, I tried to figure out how much money Harry made off of Skin Game. I calculated using realistic, optimistic terms, as far as I know.
1. We know that the diamonds were split into "brand new, metal cash boxes." I pulled what looks like an average, cheap one from Staples to get dimensions:
https://www.staples.com/MMF-Industries-STEELMASTER-Cash-Box-with-Locking-Latch-Sand-4-H-x-11-W-x-7-3-4-D/product_9165532. This cash box is 4x11x7.75 inches, giving it a total volume of 341 cubic inches. I'm assuming that the box is at least half full, because I doubt Anna managed to get enough to fill five, but judging from Charity's reaction and Harry's brief, inexact description, I'm assuming that it's somewhere around half. I'll round down to be more pessimistic. Assume Harry has 150 cubic inches of diamonds in his box. This is then halved again, down to 75 cubic inches, as he shoves them into two knotted off socks (which is super romantic).
3. Diamond weight by volume is 2.03 ounces per cubic inch. That gives us a staggering weight of 152.25 ounces, or 9.52 pounds (they're obviously very dense, so the weight-to-volume ratio is pretty dang high).
4. 1 carat=.200 grams. If the above assumptions are right, Harry has—wait for it—21,591 carats worth of diamonds.
5. Prices for diamonds vary by things like clarity, cut, and the value-per-carat is affected by how many carats remain in the finished diamond. For highest pessimism, I'm going to assume that they are the WORST clarity, and raw diamonds. Commercial rough diamonds retail, on average, for $1,500 per carat. I am going to further assume that Harry can get 35% of that value, because I assume he's bad at negotiating.
6. This returns a value of... $11,335,275.
Even if I'm off wildly, I think I'm within 50% of the total value. Harry has, at a bare minimum, five million dollars worth of diamonds, and so does Murphy. It's likely considerably higher than that.
All he has to do is stick into a high div-yield stock. Say he bought $1 million of AT&T, which has a historically high dividend yield per share. Harry can have recurring income, every quarter, of $12,500, and that's with no additional investment. If he reinvested for, say, twenty years and just lived off his cash assets? Harry will never have to work another day in his life. Even the ludicrous lifespan of a wizard. Simple compounded interest on that amount of money, assuming inflation holds below 1.5%, will ensure that he can basically retire if he so chooses.
Do I think he's likely to invest it wisely in safe, boring assets? No. I think Harry is going to start spending money on insanely expensive, but insanely cool magical gear. Plus, with all those diamonds, I'm sure he can find uses for them as focus items. He will have the blingiest foci of any wizard of his generation.
Anyway, all of this is to say that I don't think he'll open up shop again. He doesn't have to (though he might
want to), and, honestly, that line of work was bad for his health (not that Winter Knighting is any safer), and he's got a couple of daughters now. I think he's going to try to live quietly (ha!), and spoil Maggie rotten with all of the things he never had. I expect bouncy castles. And Rock 'em, Sock 'em Robots. And teddy bears that double as bodyguards. And a tracking anklet that alerts Harry to changes in Maggie's heart rate. And...
Anyway, you get the joke. I do still want to know how he's going to live, but the amount of money Harry made (off of what I consider to be Harry's first total, unimpeachable, straight-up victory in the series) in Skin Game, he's got the option to do pretty much whatever he wants.
