The purpose of fiction can be for a lot of things beyond just entertainment especially how you view it. Plenty of my favourite works are ones I wouldn't even call entertaining myself but which I appreciate their thematic elements or commentary that they provide. Coincidentally you mention Verne and when contrasted with Wells you find that even back then, when it was known as scientific romance before sci fi became an established genre, you could see differences in story telling and their emphasis on entertainment or making some sort of moral commentary. If you continue to read sci fi you may find a work that you didn't necessarily enjoy reading but which the themes or elements alone will strike an accord with you.

My translation of Verne's work like 20k made for a more fun read than Foundation, certainly, but I still prefer Asimov simply because the post-war world is an era I'm more familiar with so have a better appreciation for the elements and issues he explores beyond Foundation, more so with I, Robot, and the context to which they were written compared than the stuff from the 19th century.

And, while you have an appreciation for Verne that's shared with a lot of other readers, the Golden Age as a moniker is generally a well established period to be from the late 1930s to the mid century where there was an explosion of authors so you can rightly praise Verne but sci fi readers wouldn't generally acknowledge the mid 19th century to be a golden age, let alone The Golden Age, because, as mentioned, sci fi wasn't even an established or recognised genre at that point and beyond big names like Verne and Wells you don't see a profusion of writers expanding the genre to the degree you see in from the late 30s.