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.