As much as I hate to disagree with a mod, I do not recommend Lee presses for anything but decapping and recapping use. Lee press quality control is all over the map and the presses I've tried (all Lee presses except the Cast Classics and even they get reports from reliable sources from great to worthless junk on just about every forum so it is a coin toss as to what you get) are/were not what you would call high quality and wore out quickly if used at all. Lee only has a two year warranty which they don't stand behind anyway, all the others have lifetime warranties they DO stand behind.
Lee dies are very good for the price. RCBS seems to be a bit better at only a buck or two more, but I really like the Lee Deluxe die sets for the money. Redding, Dillon, Forster dies were found to be well worth the money if you like to reload in a test published in Precision Shooting Magazine a few years ago when they tested everything available at the time.
My RCBS Rockchucker press is nearly 40 years old and still works as well today as it did then. You can not say that about any Lee press after a year or two if it is used at all. RCBS stands behind their stuff, which Lee does not.
I'm rather surprised by the comment about "sell for pennies on the dollar". I've never had a problem selling quality (not junk) equipment at reasonable prices, and bought high quality equipment for reasonable prices as well, certainly for more than "pennies on the dollar" in either case. Of course if you buy cheap, low quality junk, expect to get that cheap "pennies on the dollar" junk price when you sell.
As far as using dies in your press, if the press uses regular dies, any brand will work. True, the Lyman Tong Tool and the long discontinued Lyman (Jr.?) turret uses the odd ball Lyman dies, and the Dillon Square Deal and the long discontinued 450Jr. (NOT the same as the 450 or 550) use odd ball Dillon dies, everything else uses the same standard die size.
As far as Hornady L'N'L or RCBS Rockchucker, it is Ford vs. Chevy. Sure it lots of fun saying one is better than the other, but if both get you there in the same style at the same speed, who cares? Now if we are talking a Yugo (Lee) vs. BMW (just about anyone compared to Lee presses) that is another matter completely.
I have not used bushings and the reports are quite mixed from the people who do. In one case where the poster bought a low quality cast "classic" press, he noticed he could not get a decent case sizing, so he checked the bushings and found the bushings had a huge amount of slop in them, which the company told him they would not fix under their two year worthless warranty. His solution was to glue the dies in the bushings to take up the slop between the bushings and the dies after adjusting the dies to take up the slop between the press and bushing. Personally that seems a bit extreme to me and I would have dumped the junk and bought a quality product, but it seemed to work for him. A quality product, like Hornady, should not have these sort of problems. Screwing dies in and out does get a bit tiresome after awhile, so possibly the bushings are a good idea if you change dies a lot.
One other thing I recommend is reading the following books: Lee MODERN RELOADING 2nd ed (if you ignore all the lies about how great Lee equipment is it has a LOT of useful info in it), Lyman #48 (old) or #49 (new), DBI METALLIC CARTRIDGE RELOADING 3rd ed (out of print and most libraries seem to have it stolen as it told you what worked and what was trash as they tried it all and sold nothing). All three books tell about loading, but all three look at it differently.
Hope this helps.