I finally got a collection helper yesterday... which still hasn't helped me find anything that I haven't already, and I still get carpal tunnel by zooming in and out of map view... but I digress.

As is publicly known, the collection helper places icons on the map view of where items are located at (be nice if it were tagged...) and outside of map view, "in world", the items noticeably shimmer.

Well... now my collection helper does NOT place icons on the map view. The category of items I'm collecting IS selected and the collection helper IS in the inventory of the active sim.

Does the usefulness of this item ..decay? or is this something else?

I had a sim who bought the collection helper but then right before she died I gave it too somebody else in the family(I just took it out of her inventory and then had somebody else put it in theirs) and after a while I noticed that it was gone. It just disapeared. It's very frustrating because now I have to buy a new one if anyone in the future want one.

Did you switch to another household, and then collection helper was gone when you came back?

oh, maybe. I'm not sure.

Did you click on the collection helper and choose for it to display what you want? Normally it's set to "nothing" and won't show anything on the map.

Edit:
Sorry, I've reread and see that you've done it. Maybe try again? I had some glitches with it, it kept resetting at first.

update, as it turns out, I seem to be beginning to have some power supply and/or memory issues and so that could very likely be the cause. After three reboots and some cooling time, I now again have the map view icons using collection helper, and I don't believe I changed anything in the game itself.

YES!! that happened to me twice. I didn't figure out it was cos i changed the active household - I thought it was the patch - but I've now figured out that changing the active household causes my Sim to lose the collection helper, as well as EVERY SINGLE fish and seed she had collected and was in her inventory. I mean seriously, WTF?????

The disappearing inventories is a big problem that I don't think the patch addressed. I use a mod to get around that problem.
Not that it matters much; until there is a workaround to turn off aging per household/lot, there's not much point in me playing legacy style, as I prefer.

Just put your important stuff, like the collection helper, into your family inventory instead of leaving it in personal inventory before you switch families.

how can you do that? When my sims move to a new house all the fish they had in the fridge goes to the family inventory, but then I can't put them back in the fridge or anywhere else.

The fish are the only things you can't take out of any inventory, unless you first put them in fish bowls before you put them in inventory. So if you have a lot of fish (like I had when my sims just moved) then it will be hell trying to get them all back out of the bowls. Your sim can just scoop them out and they will go back in their personal inventory.

I did that once, but once I switched households my sim had nothing in family inventory. But it worked before. So I'm not sure why sometimes it works and sometimes doesn't.

You had your sims move to a new house via the cellphone, right? That is the safer way. My problem on this last move was that I didn't look at the selling furniture part to see that it wasn't checked and I ended up with all the furniture (including every light fixture) inside my family inventory. It was time consuming to get rid of all them after the move, until I discovered I could just drag each group of items into the sell box.

Because EA sucks....oops!!!! Did I say that??? :b

I struggled with this and was very annoyed when I found out that the reason I was loosing everything from my inventory was because I was shifting from Family to Family. When I lost my collection helper I about to give up all together. ...

...THEN I got back into my game (after 3 day break).
Worked up to my collection helper points.
Saved the game (so that if I stuffed it, I could reboot and i'd be where I last was)
Gave the sim the collection helper
Took it OUT of inventory and placed it on the groud.
The switched to FAMILY INVENTORY and picked it up and placed it there.
When I want to use the collection helper I just take it out of FAMILY INVENTORY on the ground,
Then back to play mode but paused and picked it up and put it back into my INVENTORY.

This made me very happy and I hope you will find it useful and no longer pulling your hair out.

Happy Simming

Vanilla EA runs a process every day at 3am that wipes out all inactive sim inventory.

If you had switched back and forth prior to this process being initiated, you would not have noticed an issue.

Cheers.