Compared to vinyl, the CD would have seemed invulnerable to dirt and damage. Even more perishable? What bunkum. Every time you play a vinyl record, you're causing a very small amount of irreparable damage. Whereas I can still retrieve a bit-perfect copy of my 20+ year old CDs, even if the underside is severely scratched.
That said, how can you resist the psychological conundrum of knowing that every time you play a record, you are forever damaging it a little bit... That you're forced to destroy what you love. That like life itself, every minute it's turning brings death a step closer. That one day your old records might match your own ears' diminished high frequency response.
OK, let me qualify: Vinyl (when played on commodity equipment) does, almost unavoidably, suffer mild (or worse) analog degradation. This is why (if you're of a certain age) you'll recall that for high-value purchases, we usually made cold replicas (uh, "tapes") to insure that the "master" got played as infrequently as possible.
CDs, however, not only degrade spontaneously (even when stored "properly"), but the degradation is pretty much "either-or" -- when they do degrade, usually the whole thing is pretty much unplayable (unless you're putting it in a very expensive player).
In any case, from my own extensive experience over the years, item for item, I've had quite a few vinyl records suffer "moderate" deterioration (aftr heavy playing), but virtually all were still playable to some degree. Really - unless you leave them in the back of your car for too long, that's usually the worst that happens.
Meanwhile, an annoyingly high % if CDs simply get scuffed, or are left out in the air too long -- and end up irreparably damaged and unplayable (at least on generic players).
Other than some exceptionally rare examples of "bit rot" where errors in manufacturing cause the chemical composition of the plastics prematurely deteriorate, a compact disc will survive at least 50 if not 100 or more years, even with the most exceptionally modest storage and handling conditions.
A scuffed CD is often perfectly playable, and can otherwise be polished back to near-perfect playability with toothpaste and/or ultra-fine sandpapers.
That's the second ever mention of the CD made on Usenet, back in July 1982.
"It has no grooves, the digitally encoded recording lies beneath the disc surface, invulnerable to dirt and damage."