Virtual Families:
I had a maple leaf and a nut that looked like an onion at the same time so I got two people and waited for them to get to the collectable drawer (both were new) and the power went out approx. 3 minutes later and I lost the onion but not the maple leaf and that was one of two things that I "lost", I also bought some candy... I think... before the power went out and the money went down, and when I turned the computer back on the $ went back to what it used to be before I bought the candy and the candy was still there I loved that onion so much! I restarted the game several generations later... (and my comp. crashed

...for the "80th" time..., but I wasn't
that far) and I STILL haven't gotten that "onion" back!!!!!

I was
so cool looking!
It sucks when you lose something (collectible, event, even a kid) because the game hadn't saved that far.

I had that happen once after my couple had just had twin boys. Lost them, the next time they had a singleton. It is disappointing, but don't lose hope just yet, the collectible might appear again.
(And by the way, you'd call the "onion-like" collectible a chestnut in English, right? Not my 1st language, so I eventually get names of some fruits/plants/etc. mixed up. I know it's a sort of nut, pretty common over here, but I can't remember if that's the word)