I was wondering the same thing the other day I broke down my dvd/cd drives to remove the boards. I did notice that some of the ribbon cable connecting to the eye had some nice gold plating. Out of the 70 or so drives I did only 3 of them had that gold ended/plated ribbon.
I decided not to keep it 'cause it weighs nothing. I don't plan on seeing more of those anyway. Was able to do all those drives in about an hour and a half though it goes pretty fast.