If you haven’t began loading your own YET, then the very best answers that we can give will be based on caliber and load that you intend to use, and it also depends on the brass that you start with.

In three decades of loading and 15+ completely different cartridges that I load or have had a lot of experience loading, I can give a lot of varying opinion.

Some examples:

I’ve literally not once ever worn out 9mm brass. This may be because I have so much of it AND it also gets ejected and some lost that it’s possible that I haven’t loaded much of my brass 20+ times like a lot of my other stuff. But it may also be because 9mm is some very thick, solid stuff.

.45 is also extremely difficult to kill off. A big reason here is that it runs under 20k psi while many handgun rounds are higher pressure. There are plenty of old guys that have been loading the same .45 brass since the 1970’s and earlier and they often say that they have worn the printing off the case heads and the brass still works!

I’m a .327 Federal guy and with the rare exception of some Starline that might exist... all of the .327 Federal brass is a Federal/Speer product. I have cracked, split and otherwise murdered this brass in 5-6 loadings. And this is most likely due to the fact that .327 Federal runs 45k psi max! And the nickel plated brass is more likely to fail than the brass colored brass.

Same thing goes for nickel .38 Special. Most .38 Special lasts an absurdly long time, likely because it too is low pressure (14k to 17.5k psi) but when the .38 brass decides to split, the nickel plated stuff splits earlier than brass. EXCEPT for S&B headstamp .38 Special brass. This stuff makes perfectly good ammo but there is no longevity to this brass, it cracks irrationally early compared to almost any other .38 Special brass on the market.

Perhaps the most helpful answer to your question is... if it’s handgun brass (and especially if it’s something very mainstream and common), it’s going to last so well that you will probably forget that it was ever a concern you may have had.

But if you are truly concerned, tell us what caliber, what brand of brass you have and what kind of loads you intend to build and maybe we can give a more specific answer.