I can not afford the $500+ presses.
Over lifetime, you will spend tens of thousands of dollars on reloading components and cost of press will become moot. Life is short and you should buy whatever press (or presses) you want. So far, I have spent over $115,000 on various shooting and reloading related costs the past 27+ years of shooting way over 500,000+ rounds (just in pistol calibers). So for my lifetime, even the cost of several Dillon 1050s won't matter much.
I was trained to reload on Dillon 550 and Lee Pro 1000 and currently reload on Dillon 650 with case feeder, C-H/RCBS single stage, Lee Classic Turret, Several Pro 1000s dedicated to caliber, and recently Lee Auto Breech Lock Pro (along with C-H 3/4 station H type).
And guess which press is most often used?
Pro 1000.
For reloading high volume pistol cartridges, it's hard to beat Pro 1000. Walk up to a dedicated press for caliber, add primers/powder/brass and reload away. How many presses/measures can produce finished rounds with .001" OAL variance and meter with less than .05 gr for Sport Pistol? Not many and Pro 1000 is used to load essentially all the test rounds for my THR load development/range test threads (Rest are loaded on C-H single stage) -
https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...progressive-press.833604/page-2#post-10779806
For Christmas, I am asking Santa (Me
) for new 2018 model Lee Pro 1000 with solid flat steel base, through-ram spent primer disposal, through shellplate pin index (Like Auto Breech Lock Pro), etc.
But having said all that, if you need to load both pistol and rifle calibers, many are happy with Hornady LNL AP, like Walkalong and 9mmepiphany (And they should know
).
Did I mention life was short and we are all going to die?