We have been using amiibo cards for two years but recently learned about the newer NFC emulators, we are experimenting with the newest model from joysfusion.com and really like it with ACNH
https://joysfusion.com/codenames/ lists the amiibo characters
It lists all the files as numbers, but you can edit the filenames to list villagers by name. We have not tried to add amiibo .bin files and have not tried using it on other games. Updating requires windows Chrome browser (can be run in a VM ) and Bluetooth 4.0 or more. We did have trouble getting the Bluetooth to pair, but did get it. They use a web page, to pair and edit the files, but you can download the complete webpage from a link on their discord channel, if you want to work offline. It is about $40 US on Amazon, a fraction of what we paid for our amiibo card collection
https://discord.com/invite/EzKqQtS5Z6
ON EDIT:
The unit is small and seems fragile, it may not be a good choice for children that are rough with their toys.
Another possible approach is to write to blank NFC tags via your phone. You can buy blank tags for dirt-cheap, like 100 for a few bucks. Then you just need a way to extract the data from an existing tag so you can flash it to a blank. You can do this all with the same app if your phone’s hardware supports it.
I don’t know what the situation is like today when it comes to compatibility. It’s been a very long time since I did this. Back then, not all phones could operate in the necessary NFC modes, so I kept my old Galaxy S7 around for this purpose. It was able to read and write the entire “ROM” (if that’s the right term) of an existing tag, so I could effectively clone them, or create my own custom tags for joining wifi and things like that.
Yes, you are correct, at one time using blank NFC tags was considered the best method.
The big difference is the little unit I described is ready to go, the only thing you need to know is the amiibo number for the character you want if you do not want to edit the file names. They have a chart with pictures to look up the character, but it follows the same as the regular amiibo. For example, Avery is 140, you scroll down to AC 101 -200 and in that folder select AC 140.bin and hold the unit near the pro controller and it calls Avery. It is really fast at Harvey’s Island doing group pictures.
I think they have every amiibo currently available already in this newest system, but I only know about ACNH , and it seems complete . I have no experience with the amiibo characters for the other games, we only play ACNH.