Right.
M1A Scoutguy, I'm not sure where you're buying plated or where you're looking at coated where plated is cheaper. I find coated lead to be cheaper. Part of the problem is that plated typically comes in boxes of 250/500/1000, whereas coated lead you can buy 3k-4k at a pop with bulk price and free shipping. Maybe plated is cheaper if you're buying 250 or 500 at time? I don't know, but your goal should be to settle on a few outstanding performers and buy in bulk, so the cost per bullet for plated or coated in denominations of 250 or 500 or 100 isn't all that important. At the end of the day, if they're within a cent of each other, I wouldn't care much about price to shoot what I wanted to shoot, but that still leaves performance, and coated wins that contest for me every time.
You do, as Towns said, get a few tenths of a grain less on powder per load.
Standard deviations are also typically better, but that has more to do, I believe, with how much light is reflected by the surface, which isn't much with coated, but can be quite a bit with shiny copper plating. The sensors work better with less reflected light. So it's likely more a matter of the scanner reading more consistently than the bullets performing more consistently. Also, my primary use for standard deviations is as a quantitative indicator of my own reloading process. The lower my standard deviations, the more consistent I and my gear are performing. So if per chance I had higher than normal standard dev, but the cartridge was performing like a champ, the poor SD wouldn't bother me. The SD advantage isn't THAT significant real world.
Accuracy? I've seen a number of pros and other top level performers say that they can't get the accuracy that they want from plated, including our own Angus Hobdell. That's not definitive, but when I see no top-level guys bragging about how accurate their plated rounds are, I have my suspicions.
I have also never seen a single bullseye shooter talk or write about their pet plated load. Again, not definitive, but seems to point in a particular direction.
And then there's the all important: my experience. I have loaded better than a dozen plated bullets from two different manufacturers -- Berry's and XTreme. I was able to get exactly ONE to perform as well as Montana Gold 124gr JHP, which was my accuracy standard at the time, and that was the XTreme 147gr RN-HPCB. I have since loaded MANY different coated lead bullets that have outperformed that MG 124gr JHP and Xtreme 147 RN-HPCB. And the 115gr HAP has produced the best 9mm loads I've ever made, a hair better than my best coated lead cartridges. The only extra consideration with coated lead is that you need to bell the casemouth a bit better to make sure the coating doesn't get scraped, but other than that one extra consideration, they have been much easier for me to extract accuracy from. The only stumble I've had with coated lead is that Blue Bullets at their normal .355 diameter for 9mm haven't been great in my CZs. They HAVE been excellent in my HK and Glock, which have polygonal rifling, but in my land&groove CZs they throw a significant flyer maybe one or two out of ten, which is unacceptable. Other CZ shooters have noted the same issue, while other CZ shooters haven't. I don't know what that means. I definitely see it, though. They are consistently inconsistent in my CZs. Other than Blues, I have shot a number of different ACME, Bayou, SNS, BBI, and MBC, and all have been at least very good, and often excellent.
I think that plated bullets' best use is for new reloaders. You can buy bullets 500 at a time for a reasonable price. Plated RN bullets typically feed beautifully, and they seat very shallow for their weight. This allows for a wide OAL window with a solid safety margin, making them doubly appropriate for new reloaders. They are lead-safe. They are all around forgiving bullets to learn to load on, pretty close to perfect for that application. But they are not the end all, be all. And while I know that there are a lot of plated loading regulars here who would disagree, I would encourage every new reloader to switch gears and move on to either coated lead or jacketed after they develop their process on plated.
