There are two flavors of hardware support: The first one is "use-only", it's a bit like read-only: You can use the keys (if you know the pin), and read the public information from the card, but you cannot alter it. This kind of support is typical for national ID cards. The second type is the full support including initializiation. That means you can buy a blank card, then create the pkcs#15 structures, generate key, store certificates and so on.
For some supported SmartCard readers have a look at the PinpadReaders page.