Comment by accrual
Cool tale! I have observed a mix of viable and unreadable user-burned CD media from the late 90s and early 2000s. It definitely depends on the quality of the media, quality of the burn/drive/laser, and how well it was stored interim.
My oldest disc is some bright blue Verbatim disk my childhood friend made for me so I could play our favorite game at home pre-2000. I have a bit-perfect copy, but the actual disc still reads fine in 2025 when I last tested it.
Yep, quality is definitely a factor here, as much as it can be. We had NSF funding pre-2008, so there was plenty of budget for quality media. We spared no expense, and while I stayed in a $60/night hostel in SF for conferences, our rewritable DVDs were the best money could buy at the time lol.