Crazy to buy a 17 year old CD Player?

 For a solid cd player look for an A.D.S CD3 or CD4, in the 80's  a CD3 was 2k, they are bullet proof having been developed by BRAUN. For info call Cosmophonic Sound in NYC they provide  service and have a great rep.

I've seen  Esoteric X05 CD/SACD players go for $2200.  Amazing player!

Within you budget I would suggest the Oppo also. If you can go higher I suggest the PSADUDIO DSP. Incredible unit!!!

To the OP question, Yes it would be crazy to buy a 17 year old cdp.
chances are the laser or transport won't last and be difficult to replace as many have noted.  More importantly the DAC probably won't be as good as many that are obtainable on your budget and you won't have flexibility going forward if you wish to branch into other digital sources.
  The Oppo 205 makes a lot of sense.  It is 60% of your budget.
it has a really good DAC.  It will play DVDs and Blu Rays.  it will add a bunch of options that you may never wish to use, but if you do, you're covered, namely: multichannel, computer audio, and streaming.  It has good customer service, which you probably won't get on a 17 year old CDP

I'll second the POV of the respondent who recommended OPPO.  Both the 105 and the 205 have state of the art DACs, and upsample everything to 192/24 and play DSD in native format, including (if you wish) multi-channel analog output. 

I love ARC gear (use some myself) but the OPPO makes virtually ALL high-end CD players obsolete, from a pricing standpoint as well as from a sound standpoint.  Don't be misled by those who claim it has to be wired into a home-theatre system.  It requires a simple TV connection for set-up.  Once that is done and you have it in "pure audio" mode, it is simply a disk player.