I finally went to play sims after a long time of not playing, and when I click the CAS folder there are 4 sims in there. Some have the folder icon in the bottom right, some have the little purple CC star. I tried nuking the entire game, all my other CC seems to be showing up fine it's just the sims. Nuking didnt work, when I make a random sim they are in the saved sim folder. Some of the sims are in .sim type and some I have to double click and install. I've installed them and I can see them on the downloads list where I can highlight and install them again but none are showing up. I changed one .sim into a .package and it worked, but when I went to do another the same way it did not work. I'm kind of at a loss of what to do, and I have every expansion in this game so I'm hesitant to re-install. When I go to old families I had created with old cas folder sims, those sims still work just fine, no errors and no "file is not located" errors and my sims look exactly the same as they did in the CAS folder.

See the guide to install sims - Game Help:Installing TS3 Sims^wiki. There should only be files with the .sim in the SavedSims folder. Sims3packs should be in the Downloads folder and are installed with the launcher.

You seem to mention several issues in your explanation and it's a little confusing trying to sort them all out.

Well I have .sim in the saved sim folder, and I have the sims 3 pack's in the mods folder, but the ones in the savedsim aren't showing up. I made a sim in the CAS, saved it and when I looked in the saved sims folder it was there. But if I open the game again, that sim wont be in the CAS in the game. So I can't select them. I changed some of the .sim into .package and some have worked that way...