1) Buy a contactless card reader from a good source e.g. https://www.javacardsdk.com/product/acr1252u or last two from this table https://webshop.d-logic.net/nfc-rfid-device-comparison, don't buy NFC ones, you need smartcard support specifically.
Also steer clear of cheep ACR122U readers from ebay or ali, for some reason there are a lot of fakes https://www.acs.com.hk/en/press-release/2266/advanced-card-s...
2) Buy a few contactless javacards e.g. https://www.javacardsdk.com/product/j3h145/, don't buy EMV ones unless you're Europay, Mastercard or VISA.
3) Once you get them install opensc, pcsc-lite, ccid and get gp.jar from https://javacard.pro/globalplatform/ and read some pages from https://github.com/philipWendland/IsoApplet/wiki, it will get you started.