[John Rogers]

If you consider all the pieces to reload, then treat that cost like tools for your car/race car/motorcycle then what you have to worry about are the prices for powder, primers and the bullet. In those cases, the chance to stock up make reloading a good investment. Depending on where you live if there are "gun shows" then you can buy boxes of cast lead wad cutters or semi wad cutters, the powder, primers and all you need is something to reload. Cases need to be de-primed, cleaned, polished, case length checked, length adjusted and then repeat for all 500 cases you have. You will also need some good plastic boxes to hold the new reloads in such as available on line.

Note RCBS sells a complete reloading setup for the Rock Chunker in a box (or used to?) so all you'll need is a vibrating cleaner and walnut shells to do the polishing.

The one thing no mentioned so far is a place to do all this, if you have a nice garage then it will slowly be taken over by all this stuff, oh yeah you'll need a bench to do all this on.
John