Why CD players so expensive when the fomat is dead

CD's dead? Tell that to my ever growing collection.

It absolutely IS supply and demand. No one would be making expensive CD players if no one was buying them. It's as simple as that.

Have you looked at high end turntable prices lately and that format is supposedly dead and buried. I actually wasn't aware that Walwart was the bellwether of the industry, all of hi-fi marketing is going to the internet anyway. One of the rules of marketing is the price goes up as the market contracts, the ultra high end illustrates this very well. There is no current replacement for CD, computer audio requires considerable expertise and commitment of time and resources and will never , in its present form, replace CD. God knows I would like a superior replacement myself but as the entertainment industry keeps illustrating that they can't find their marketing posterior with both hands I don't expect to see one in my life time.

They killed the LP format twenty years ago and there seem to still be an awful lot of record players selling for 50K+.

Dead? Check out the new Jazz at Pawnshop CD at over $100 USD. I think low end CD is dead but high end CD and CDP are still alive and very healthy.