The truth is nowhere near as simple and straight forward as you imagine it is.
I just picked up a big load of once fired cases from a guy that included a bunch of Winchester, Federal, Dominion, S&B and 30x Herters.
The guy I got them off has a number of different 303 rifles and helpfully marked the brass holders with the rifle they had been shot in. One thing I noticed was that the expansion ring on the brass mostly correlated to the rifle it had been fired in. There was a bunch of Federal brass that showed no expansion ring at all and all those seem to have been fired in a Ross rifle.
The S&B cases did show some expansion at the ring, and supposedly those are better quality modern brass?
I have a bunch of Dominion Ctg Co brass that has to be close to 50 years old, likely older.
I've reloaded this stuff several times, but only for "one" rifle, which was a 1950 Longbranch with a tight chamber and still new in the grease when when I bought it. The Dominion cases were once fired and given to me after the fellow who had them passed on. They all had expansion rings from the initial firing.
These cases would not fit into the chamber of my LB 1950 with just neck resizing, that's when I checked the chamber dimensions. They were only full length resized once to fireform to the chamber of the 1950.
I had one neck split after five reloads, so annealed the rest of the cases used in that rifle every 3-4 reloads.
I don't know how many times they've been reloaded.
Dominion made good brass and I scrounge it when I can.
Herter's never made any of their own products. They were a major distributor and often had components assembled from different suppliers, then packaged under their name brand.
Things like Sauer single action revolvers, ammunition, lisenced copies of BSA receivers (with J or U prefix model designations) made in Yugoslavia. Brass from Norma with Herter's stamps on the head, Loomis fishing rods, Bear Bows etc.
They were once one of the biggest mail order retail outlets in North America and many sports minded people ordered everything from them because the quality was decent and the prices, even after shipping were as good or better than could be had locally. Also their selection was enormous.
The Gun Control Act of 68 was the first nail in their coffin and the expanding economy of North America saw the opening of Large Box Retail Outlet stores all over North America. Bass Pro was one of the first and it slowly eroded the mail order business.
Canada's version of Herter's, on a much smaller scale, was S.I.R or Sydney I. Robinson.
When it came to quality, Herter's brass was always good but you didn't know where it came from. Some batches lasted seemingly indefinitely if they were loaded to sensible pressures, others not so good but not bad either.
