Thanks for asking our advice. Welcome to reloading
Progressive or Single Stage?
I have an opinion to share.
Progressives scare me a little. My personal style does not mexh well with monitoing multiple simultaneous operations. But that's just me. If you are extremely methodical and easily design and follow algorithmic procedures, go ahead with the progressive. Especially if you are anal retentive about process. I'm not that good. I miss things.
With a progressive, there are usually at least 3 different operations going on at the same time. If you are willing to go slow and stop on each stroke of the handle to make sure each one completed correctly, you are unlikely to miss something going wrong. I am not suggesting you are impatient or prone to cutting corners or unobservant, but am just acknowledging that human beings are subject to failures. And progressive presses allow you to make such failures several times faster than single stages.
Self-knowledge is a a valuable trait. Know your strengths and weaknesses and and take them into account when you choose your first press.
So, to reiterate:
1) A progressive press has multiple simultaneous operations. Hard to keep track of, especially if you are new to reloading. Missing a detail (or doubling up on one) can be hazardous to your gun, your hand, your eyes, your life, and dangerous to anyone near to you (physical proximity and emotional proximity).
2) Trying to watch those multiple things going on all at the same time is a difficult way to learn the reloading process. Die adjustment, seating depth, primer seating, crimp strength when a new reloader is starting out, or an experienced reloader is starting to load a new (for him/her) cartridge is enough to occupy your attention.
And, of course, the classic advice:
3) You will never regret having your single stage press. I used to own two progressives (one permanently set up for large primer cartridges and one for small primer cartridges, because I don't like to swap those parts out). I will also never get rid of my single stage. While the progressives are faster, they require more attention and there are a few operations I cannot do on my progressives, at least, not conveniently. I wonder how many reloaders have only progressive presses? Very few, I opine. There are things you may want to do on a single stage that just cannot be done (or are very clumsily done) on any other type.
The compromise between progressive and single stage, of course is the turret press. You leave your dies set up in a 4 or 5 position turret head and rotate the head. Keep one head for each chanbering and you rarely have to deal with switching and re-setting. You just change heads that bolt (or bayonet) into place. I will make another post about that.
But first, "To kit or not to kit?" (with thanks to W. Shakespeare)
If you start slowly with just the extremely minimal necessities and only buy what you really need, you can put together your own kit (better than any off-the-shelf, pre-packaged kit), but you will have put a lot of thought into it (which actually is a good thing, but will tire your brain and take time, measured in both hours spent in research and measured in weeks/months in experimenting with the loading process, and shopping).
When I first started reloading in the mid-70s, they did not market a "kit" (that I knew of). I got a RockChucker from RCBS, Scale, Dies, and all the stuff I needed, new when I bought my first gun (Dan Wesson .357 Mag). I knew I couldn't afford to shoot if I had to buy retail ammunition. Not long after, Later, I got a couple of used Lee Pro1000 progressives. But I never got used to them and traded "up" to a Lee Classic Turret. But, look for my next post for that story.
Lost Sheep
But I learned to reload with a Lee Loader in 1969...