@318willrun and I have been having our battles LOL about the difference is now seemingly in price between stock La heads Magnum heads and now a new offering by Speedmaster there aluminum assembled heads when on sale can be purchased to your door for$820 fully assembled.
Of course there may be several different reasons for either head. Some people may just want to work with what they have and that's great and that's exactly what I did. Only now in hindsight seeing that I spent more than $820 on these cast-iron heads. A lot of people will say they need to be looked over and the pair that I have I will. Also I've heard the argument of our Factory heads being completely production and being slapped on and running and nowhere near the tolerances of today's standards.
So basically for me it's more of a bang for buck thread, but again there are a lot of people that want a stock look and so forth...