I wish everyone knew the real cost that goes into the production of a card.
Sure there's a production cost, but it would be much more interesting to know what the marginal cost is. Yes, there's a heavy initial investment, but I'm pretty sure that the marginal cost, i.e. the added cost of that comes from producing one additional card isn't that high.
You say they're hardly making anything on the cards, and we are supposed to take your word for it, yet it's in fact highly unlikely: if this were the case, iStripper would have stopped existing a long time ago.