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PartsExpress carries those glass optical cables for about the same price that you'd find them on eBay, but they come covered in luxurious techflex. Since it's recommended that all your cables must look amazing, it should be an easy choice. Otherwise you stand to lose 3-4 cool points and/or 1-2 endurance.

The real problem is that there aren't many small form factor CD players out there at an appropriate price. If you want a small CD player to sit on an office desk, bedside table etc., you're stuck with one of the following: 1. A high-quality PCDP, most likely used and possibly difficult to come by 2. A craptastic half-wide DVD player mated to a DAC 3. An audiophile grade half-wide CD player in $500 land I've run a few searches, and half-wide DVD players are generally the brands you'd want to give away but never keep for yourself. I doubt they'd be trustworthy as a transport. Same goes for pretty much all currently-produced PCDPs. Finally, there are only two half-wide cd players that worth giving a damn about, and they are far more than most people will want to spend: The Shanling PCD300A ($500 US) and the Musical fidelity X-Ray, which goes from $500-700 used on Audiogon. I suppose that now that everyone in the world is listening to their emm-pee-threes, the average consumer has no need for such a device.

A (relatively) newer PCDP that sounds quite nice is the Sony D-EJ2000. It's currently being used in my bedside rig plugged into a Little Dot II from the line-out. You can expect a crisp and clean sound, without any bloat. I've seen used ones on eBay for ~$70-80. It comes with a little charger stand that you can leave it in indefinitely.

w00t, you finally got them! What were the exciting new toys?