which turntable to buy for $1500 best value ?

Smognote.
There is no oil in a Sota. I have purchased, sold and shipped many Sota Star, Sapphire and Cosmos and have never heard or seen anything regarding leaking oil.

As for a rega 250, It will work fine. I have an audiomods IV mounted on a Sota Cosmos which sounds awesome. You might want to look into getting the audiomods work done to your Rega 250. It is a bargain for what you get,.

manitunc, thanks again, for the info. it's good to know the rb250 would work for now. vic, i was wondering if you would explain run out. i do know what that is but am very interested. i [with out question] would buy a 5000 dollar table if it were in my budget. someday hopefully but for now i can not exceed 1500. now when i see something i like, i tend to look at the zip code to see if i can aviod having it shipped. is this the way most potential buyers go?

SOTA - the refurbished units ex factory are good value. SOTA uses grease in bearing not oil. Critical thing in transporting a SOTA is the transit bolts that lift the platter/spindle off the sapphire thrust pad to prevent damage in transit.
Replacing the bearing on a used SOTA is very easy as well, can be done in the field.

If used tables are in the picture, why not vintage used, if well restored by the seller? You can buy many a very high quality vintage direct-drive tt for $1500 and less, with tonearm. (The built-on tonearms are not always up to the quality of the tt and its drive system, however. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.)

I really don't want to knock SOTA tt's per se, but the Star Sapphire that I used to own (for at least 5-10 years) could not hold pitch on piano chords, and I don't think it was a defective unit. Boy, was I surprised that I did not have to put up with that, when I replaced it with a Nottingham. I think Nottingham should be in this discussion, if vintage does not appeal to the OP.

Smognote, runout is the very small distance between moving parts such as collars and bearings. Without runout the two pieces would be press fit together and they wouldn't spin. Bearings are naturally susceptible to chatter and the transmission of environmental vibration.

The spindle in the Well Tempered is immersed in lubricating fluid and constantly in contact with four nylon/plastic points. The platter belt preloads the spindle into these points constantly. The Well Tempered cleverly and economically addressed many turntable issues years ago.

There are decent turntables that use this old metal collar bearing technology with good success. I'm so tainted by the simplicity of the Well Tempered that when I see these exotic and expensive methods to correct these old problems I'm humored. Todays somewhat expensive magnetic suspension is taking the spinning platter to yet another level of performance

Another take on a bearing with runout is the DPS turntable that Ayre Acoustics markets. From what little I've read the bearing is under constant friction. The motor that drives the platter is very robust to be able to turn this very tight bearing. The reviews on Ayre's unassuming DPS turntable are very good.