To satisfy my own curiosity I just burned a 7 years old CD-R.

Kodak Ultima Silver+Gold CD-R 12x 700MB (Eastman Kodak type 5)
Burned at 8x (highest supported speed) in my NEC ND-4551A 1-X3

1. Disc Quality scan at 32x in NEC 4551
2. Disc Quality scan at 32x in BenQ 1655
3. Read Transfer test in BenQ 1655

Not too shabby for 7 year old blank media.

This media is supposed to be very good for archiving, but it's not good for handling because the reflective layer is the top layer (no lacquer as far as I can tell) and it's very fragile.