Lesson #1: The value of recovered Brass.
Back in my early days of reloading I came home from the range with a (rough count) of 960 pieces of brass for the various calibers I reload and another 150 that will go into the scrap bucket.
I was sitting in the "man cave" chuckling to myself and inspecting the cases before I tumbled them and my wife wandered in to see what I was doing. "GOLD!" I said, "I struck GOLD".
She just looked at me
"So what's the big deal" she said, "Yeah you don't have to buy brass for a while but it's nothing to get THAT excited about".
"Well," says I "if I bought this brass new (say from Starline) it would run me between $0.11 and $0.13 for each piece. So if we just average let's say $0.12 for each piece. that means you are looking at roughly $115.00 in brass that I just picked up for FREE"!
So she thought that was nice, but then something struck me. I've only been reloading for a short period so I guess this particular thought had never bubbled to the surface before.
Grinning I said to her "and there's more! Each piece is reusable, probably several times with my light loads and assuming I don't loose any of them".
"In fact, I can probably get 5 or 6 (or more) reloads out of each of these cases! That means I'm saving that $0.12 EVERY TIME until the brass is unusable! Since I'm not buying new brass that means that, to me, this pile of brass has a total "use value" of about $575.00-$690.00 vs buying new ammo!"
Suddenly my wife sees that little pile of dirty brass in a whole different light