[anovikov]

Vanadium is only $6 per pound. About as expensive as street price of ice cream. It's not a rare earth element or anything like that.

[ganzuul]

Lots of hand tools like hex-head wrenches also use it. Typically they get stamped with "CR-V" for chromium-vanadium. It's basically all you need to know when buying standard quality hand tools.

In addition to being affordable the material is available in bulk and there exists an industry which knows how to work with it. Same with all the materials mentioned.