Everybody who reloads needs a single station press. However, a progressive press makes short work of reloading things you shoot a lot (or even a little). I don't want to make a career of reloading, and finishing 400-600 rounds in a Dillon 550b only takes an hour or two. Then I'm good for a couple of months in that caliber. I clean them up and put them in plastic candy jars. I take out enough for a range session and put them in cartridge boxes.

I shoot more than one caliber, including .223 and .308, so longer runs offset the extra setup time for a progressive press. I keep the RCBS Rockchukker set up for case prep, bullet pulling, or odd jobs.

It's break even if you buy new brass and jacketed bullets. After you built up a brass inventory, jacketed bullets cost about $25/100, and hard cast bullets a third of that. There are 7000 grains in a pound, and primers are about $0.04 each, so you can figure your incremental costs pretty easily. It's hard to justify 9mm and .223 on a cost basis, but .308 or larger, .45 ACP, and any revolver cartridge is well worth while. Cutting your group size in half is priceless!