Just used the first golden spoon myself. All the popups cost a *lot* of time. But of course that's part of the reward so I don't know you'd want to avoid them. Still could be a thought if it gets you 1 more board.
Going as fast as I could, zero thinking time between animations, I was at 0:59 remaining after the 3rd board. Ruled out starting a 5th one and took my breath after starting the 4th. Got a pretty decent haul through the 3 boards I raced (maybe a bit less than 20 GP progress).
So it seems a golden spoon in my estimation is worth 4-5 wooden ones - but 5 would require some pretty extreme speed.
If you have several animation steps that may happen (eg. multiple rows of prizes falling down), it's faster to exit the event window and return. I managed to fit in six games, which seems to be a bit much, but managed to get 19 progress, 38000 league points, and 3 daily specials.
Also, if you want to focus on just progress (which may be the move, considering how far out the golden upgrade fragments are), you want to avoid getting the prize boxes to the bottom as they eat up a lot of time due to the animation and prize popup. However, these golden spoons would be great for a day where there is a daily special you want. I could see you getting quite a few specials using the gold spoon.
It's a really interesting mechanic, and I'm already really enjoying it.