Best CD transport?

Dfwlistener, I feel your pain - ripping takes a lot of time but you can try to rip only CD that you want to listen to. It will take less couple of minutes to be able to start simultaneous playback while CD is being ripped. That's how I transferred most of mine.

Try the C.E.C. TL0 3.0 CD Transport

I was in a similar position somewhat except that I wasn't ripping anything but simply needed a transport to feed via spdif into my Dac (Lampizator Big 6 then recently a Big7) so I did exactly what you originally said you would: I bought an Oppo BDP 105 which I use strictly as a transport for coax out. I had read, as you, that it was pretty well built,(it is) and has so far proven reliable and permitted both dacs to sound pretty darn awesome. I briefly tried it once alone via its own analog outs and it sounded better than you might expect a $1200. player but aside from that one time I have never utilized it for any other purpose but for its coax out.To my mind it was an appropriate price point for its purpose...much less $$$ and I figured there is still plenty of stuff out there that would work but perhaps not quite as robust or considerate of parts quality/bang-for-the-buck; any more expensive seemed counter-intuitive since I wasn't interested in any other aspects of what it can do. As for resale, at some point down the line its remarkable versatility would seem to make it a good used choice for a wide variety of people. For the record, the Lampizator Dacs are stupendous.
Good luck with your decision.

Why not a PS Audio PWT?

CEC's in general are tops in my experience, and I have a CEC TL-1X modded by RAM that I would match up against any turntable.

Neal