I have been around guns all my life, I'll be 75 this year. I really didn't get into having a lot of guns until I was about 25. When I did I quickly discovered that it was very expensive to shoot store bought stuff (center fire) even back in the late 60's and on. My older brother was already into casting. We didn't live close enough to convers. He actually got into casting in 1960, he was working for the Arizona State Prison. The prison had a shooting qualifying program. It cost quite a lot for the prison to supply ammo, (mostly 38 and 45 ACP) my brother went to the Warden and suggested that they cast their own bullets and have the prisoners cast the bullets it worked out great. Anyway, in 1970 I decided to start casting and reloading for a 357 Blackhawk I had bought a few months earlier. I paid the huge some of $76.00 + tax brand new. I went to a little gun shop in Avondale Arizona. The owner by pure luck was a caster. He sold me a used single cavity Lyman RNFP 158 gr. mold for the sum of $5.00 including the handles. I drove tanker truck for the Standard Oil Co. (Chevron) in Las Vegas Nevada for the first 2 years and Phoenix Arizona for 27 years. I found a cast iron pot laying beside the road in Las Vegas while making deliveries, at that time I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it but decided to keep it. It was full of lead or tin I'm not sure which it held 25# of lead. I had no problem getting lead when I started casting. The Chevron dealers gave me all I wanted. In phoenix we had about 50 service stations through out the Phoenix delivery zone. I stocked piled buckets of tire weights, and when I got too many I took some of them down to the salvage yard made enough money to buy new up dates for my casting. I also stock piled Powder, primers, and any thing else I needed. You could say by working for Chevron I fell into a gold mine. I also made enough from the tire weights to buy a few guns. Over the years that I work for Chevron I probably picked up several hundred 5 gallon buckets of tire weights I lost count. When I started casting I had that cast iron pot and an old cast iron double burner propane camp stove with the four little curved legs. AS long as there was no wind it worked great. A single cavity 38 mold, a camp stove, a pot and I was in business. My next purchas was a #45 Lyman sizer luber and a .357 H & I die. I think I paid about $20.00 dollars for those and I also bought a used RCBS Jr. Press for I think about $10.00. All that equipment was quickly paid for in loaded ammo savings. I think my first box of 38 reloads cost about $35.00 or $40.00 dollars. My reloads at that time including powder primers lube and cases cost me less than 1 1/2 cents a peace probably less or .75 cents a box not encluding the equipment.. My brother had thousands of 38 cases so I had a good supply of those.