[Smokey Joe]

Budman2--IMX, Starline is as good as it gets for pistol brass. The other posters have 'splained the diff between nickel-plated and "plain-Jane" brass. You're shooting a cartridge that is almost exclusively shot in revolvers, so the shooters usually take home all their own brass, and there isn't much in the way of free range brass for you--well, at least, not @ the ranges I frequent!

(Autoloaders fling brass, which the shooters lose regularly. So the scrounging is great for .45ACP, for example.)

So you'll be buying almost all of yr brass.

I use my .357 in bullseye pistol, which means that uniformity in the reloads is an important factor. My experience/advice? Splurge, buy Starline, have it all one manufacturer. You'll never be sorry.

OTOH, for practice rounds, I DO use such free range brass as I have. It works fine for practice--no diff in performance between brass and nickel-plate cases. It being free, I don't care about its longevity. Though I NEVER use AMERC brass, and have started to avoid R-P as well.

.38 Spl brass is much more common at ranges, and you could reload that, of course, but that entails re-adjusting yr dies for the shorter brass. And also a ring of crud in yr cylinders, which may make chambering the longer .357's difficult. And the .38's may have a different POI with the same sight setting. Etc, etc. I just recycle the .38 cases I find, and use the proceeds to buy some more Starline .357 cases.