I have swaging dies for two calibers of bullets.
1. A .429" die made for me by Frank Hemsted in 1973. I think I paid $75 for the die, solid ram for my RCBS press, HP nose punch, and automatic ejector. In those days there was not as great a selection of jacketed .44 bullets, and I wanted to experiment with different jacket lengths and bullet weights in the .44 Magnum and .44 AutoMag.
2. An 1 1/2"-12 die made by Art Freund in the mid-'90s to swage 1" diameter bullets for my 4-Bore rifles.
We got an end mill reground by a local machinist to the proper nose shape to cut the interior of the die, then polished the inside of the die and had it hardened.
Jackets were bored out of short sections of 1" solid copper rod by a local job shop, and I cut .875" diameter extruded lead wire for cores, filed to matching weight before being put into the jackets for swaging.
Swaging was done on my OWS Rock Crusher press. I made an auto ejector out of allthread and some aluminum angle.
IIRC total materials and labor for this setup cost a bit less than $200, not counting the copper and lead of course. BTW the bullets shot one-hole (BIG cloverleaf!) groups at 100 yards out of my scoped single barrel gun.
In each of these cases, I paid to get a swage die that would produce something that was not available for purchase anywhere at the time.
So here is my question: Who is target market for Corbin (and others) to sell dies that cost multiple hundreds of dollars to make .22 centerfire bullets out of fired rimfire cases?
I could understand a hobby machinist making his own dies to see what level of quality bullets he could turn out thusly, but what's the goal of the guy who buys this equipment, given that excellent .224" factory bullets are about a dime each?
Bench rest shooters like Walt Berger make their own bullets in expensive dies with the best jackets they can purchase, to wring every last bit of accuracy out of their guns. My first thought is that Walt's hair would stand on end if you told him you were going to run a fired .22 case into one of his match dies. Second, is even clean, never-fired brass as good as gilding metal for bullet jackets?
Making .22 bullets out of fired rimfire brass strikes me like the prospect of reloading fired primers--something you'd only do as a last resort.
What am I missing?