Disappearing seagull key; Garden warfare 2

That sucks, but it's not really that hard to grind up 25 stars.  It'll be several days until you can play a mystery portal game and possibly access any trial doors, anyway.

Almost everyone I've talked to wound up using the Key immediately after purchasing it; I know that personally when i first bought it I considered the possibility that it had a time limit to be used, even though there was no indication of that being the case, so I hurried down to unlock the door.

When you discovered that it was back in it's original place dd it demand another payment of Stars to pick it up or were you able to simply grab it once again for free since you had already paid previously?

When I got the key I didn't use it right away.  I got preoccupied with a different task and then switched characters.  When I switched characters the key disappeared.  I went back to the gull and thought I was out of luck, but I was able to get the key again without any additional payment.  I just clicked on the gull like I was going to pick up the key and it appeared above my character again.  I immediately went and used it so I don't know if there is a time limit on how long it "waits".

This happened to me tonight. My wife and I were playing splitscreen. I bought it, immediately unlocked the gnome door, tried to go into the portal, and got a "you must be alone" error message.

She logged out, it returned me to the base, the key reset, I'm out 25 stars. VERY annoying. ☹️

A lot of people on PS4 lost some progress last night when the EA servers crashed.  My game sent all the new quests I had completed back on to the quest board, and presumably any coins I had earned leading up to the crash disappeared as well.

Interesting! One of the quests I had recently done was back up my board after the incident, but the one that gave me 10 stars (Epic quest to vanquish 500 plants with any ice zombie) was gone - along with my stars. 

I'm sorry, you would seem to have really gotten the short end of the stick!

I can explain the epic quest, I think.  Was it an old quest or one from the current set?  If it was an old one, when it got pulled from your active quests, it disappeared as it would if you had cancelled it.  Current quests go back on the board if cancelled, older ones just go away.