Ask HN: Why aren't there cheap, available smartcards?

Smartcards have a huge security advantage - namely, that the key can never be stolen, only used. Additionally, there is a widely interoperable PKCS#11 standard supported by everything from Firefox to OpenSSH to perform encryption, digital signatures, and identity verification on smart cards.

Knowing all of this, I thought, why not try to set up smart card infrastructure on my Linux VPSes? There are hundreds of cheap readers on the market with tons of positive Amazon reviews, after all.

But no. They're all for the military CAC/PIV infrastructure, and while you can just buy blank PIV-compatible cards, you can't provision them with keys unless you buy proprietary vendor-specific Windows software. There's an abandonware open-source project called OpenSC which tries to hack together provisioning support for some cards, but many on its list of Supported Devices are no longer sold. Those that are are from strange European websites with prices in Euro including VAT.

There's Yubikey, but the ones with smart card functionality are $50. And Yubikey appears to be the only game in town.

What gives? Why won't someone sell me a cheap smart card I can provision for myself or a small organization?