Which $12 glass Toslink were people raving about?

You are probably referring to the Toslinks available from AudiogoN member captnstarstripe. I have two of his, and found them to be highly competitive against much more expensive Toslinks I tested.

Quick editorial: I always found coax digital cables to be better, but if you must use Toslink, captnstarstripe offers a tremendous value. I want to say they were like $29 for a meter or something like that.

I believe the glass toslink that has 280 glass threads is thought to be the best sounding toslink for the price. It is available on Audiogon, Ebay and even Buy.com had a limited stock of them.

The XLO VDO toslink is very good also. I had the $29 one mentioned and IMO this one sounds better. It is around $40.

I would concur with Dolfan that the XLO VDO sounds much better than the inexpensive 280 glass thread version, which still does sound better than most introductory toslinks. The XLO was just more natural and musical in its presentation. This was especially easy to hear with acoustic type recordings. The XLO retails for $70 but can be found for about half that.