Have you ever lost an important object and just could not find it?

It’s a famous story in my family that my brother’s first favorite teddy bear disappeared off the face of the earth. In September 1998 it disappeared and now 11 years later, it still has not been found. I just find it odd. We remember it to the date. On 9/7/98, the bear was seen in the kitchen. On the morning of 9/8/98, my brother was looking for it and couldn’t find it. It’s never been found.

Now I’m getting worried that a USB drive containing the only copies of many Word documents of mine may be gone forever. It’s been missing for 3 weeks and it’s very possible it fell into a garbage can and went out with the garbage since there is one that was under my desk at the time and I had seen CDs fall off my desk into it before (don’t ask why I waited so long to move it). On that USB drive were 100s of pages of stories and a dream log I kept for over 2 years. All will be lost forever if I don’t find it.

Have you every lost anything important like that and never found it? How long did you look for it? When did you decide that it was gone forever, if you even decided that at all?