Coming from someone that has made his own working pantograph, I can tell ya that you can still end up with quite a bit of money tied Up in It, not to mention the time to get It working correctly.
If You feel the need to go that route first instead of jumping straight into cnc, then maybe a 1 to 1 machine would be a better choice. More intricate designs would be much harder on a 1 to 1 ratio, but you could do simple inlays, and The reason I say that is that If you make It using machine slides, then You could retrofit It later with ball screws and steppers to upgrade It to cnc in the future.
With My machine I have found that with each pattern I make, It can require the use of different size styluses, and endmills in some cases. I try to keep a log of that stuff for each pattern. Much of It has to do with sharpness, roundness or sizing of the inlays, but I have made several different size styluses for different patterns. It is often a struggle to get a good working pattern, so you want to log that stuff down in a journal or something.
With that said I would much rather be using a cnc for inlays, and If you have the funds to jump right in, then I believe the effort would be better served rather then dealing with a manual machine.