You do not need an appliance to learn hardware custody honestly. A YubiKey 5's PIV applet is a real PKCS#11 token via libykcs11, with genuinely non-extractable keys, real signing latency, and a smartcard's exclusive-access model — goca's own probe has been run green against one, on real hardware. What it honestly gives: strict pkcs11 only (it has no symmetric-key store, so wrapped mode is impossible — the smartcard tier validates the stronger mode), about four usable slots, RSA and ECDSA plus Ed25519 — and no ML-DSA, no SLH-DSA, no composite: PQC cannot be exercised here.
Read the hazards before plugging it in. Three wrong PINs block the applet, and three wrong PUKs after that force a reset that destroys every PIV key on it — an automated retry loop with a stale PIN does this in under a second. A reset also kills whatever else uses PIV: smartcard logon, SSH. And a --touch-policy ALWAYS key is unattended-signing poison: fine for an attended root, fatal for scheduled CRL generation — which is why presenceRequired on the module document makes goca refuse unattended callers up front.
Now I can put a practice CA key in real hardware for under $60.