Seems like CDs are redundant here though, given that they get digitized anyway.
I also buy a lot of digital music on bandcamp.com, and like OP, host using navidrome.
But you are right, when company comes over letting people DJ is fun. Instead of using my actual CDs, I set up a system with RFID cards. You can buy hundreds of RFID cards for super cheap. I print out the cover art of each of them, and the RFID ID corresponds to an album. A simple RFID reader hooked up to a pi, which reads the ID and plays the corresponding album with mpd on my stereo, makes for a cheap, fun way to allow people to physically explore your collection.
(Un??)fortunately, I am usually the one slinging CDs for people to listen to, people just like being able to offload that and listen to curated music, vs. "throw on spotify whatever" and having it just _play_.
There is a reason people can tell you how exactly how many times they've bought greenday dookie, offspring smash, 2pac all eyez on me and other 90s gold. I think this is some collective brainrot or everyone is talking about hiding their discs in the canticle of leibowitz and not their corolla.
edit: 35 year old cds is 1995, that your dad comment made it sound even older. I guess you're not the prime cd burner in the house, your dad was, ask him how many times he's bought those working discs albums. Or he was the guy with the giant bookcase envelope of CDs he treated like gold. I could always burn a new one.
Like any other media, frequent use and handling will degrade discs, and sunlight is the natural enemy of anything plastic. The interior of a car will also get ridiculously hot on a sunny day, I have seen vinyl literally melt. (And crayons!) Actually I've lost more discs to theft than anything else, by a large margin.
35 years ago is 1991. Don't try to age me faster than I'm already going!
Also, buying directly from artists (when you can) is a good way to support them.