[Smokey Joe]

Harley Quinn--Those "nickel" cases are nickel plated plain old brass. Nickel plating was a good idea back when LEO's wore a black leather gun belt with cartridge loops--The leather would cause regular brass to corrode, but the nickel plated cases were unaffected. Plus, the bright nickel plating and the black leather were a good-looking combination. Now most LEO's wear magazine pouches rather than cartridge loops, and in the magazines, the cartridges don't touch the leather, so it's not an issue any more. But there is this tradition of nickel-plating the cases.

Anyhow, nickel plated brass reloads--and polishes--just the same as unplated brass, except as someone pointed out, the cases don't tend to last as long. Also, once in a great while some nickel will unplate and stick in yr equipment which can cause a problem.

For me, I polish and reload and shoot the occasional nickel-plated case right along with my brass cases. They work just the same.

Now, STEEL, OTOH, is a whole nother matter. It's much harder than brass; could scratch dies, requires more effort to resize, and is just generally a PITA to reload. A few posters have mentioned trying to reload it, as an experiment, and it can be done. But nobody I've ever heard of, including all the I'net posters I've read, has ever said that they reload it as a regular thing.

The steel cases were never intended to be reloaded in the first place--Steel is much cheaper than brass and I expect that is what lead to their development, but they were made for military rounds. Nobody in a shooting war picks up their empties.

Anyhow, as far as shooting steel-cased ammo on the range, you just shoot 'em, then please put the empties in the TRASH, not in the brass bucket. There isn't even a market for 'em as scrap. BTW, this goes for the "copper-washed" steel cases, too. They are still plain old steel underneath, just harder to sort out for throwing away.