You say this is the third time returning to the game - is it possible you've inadvertently created a new account each time you came back to the game that are separate to your original 1.0 account? This happened to a lot of players back during Beta, where their Beta codes were accidentally creating new accounts when registering the codes rather than being added to their existing accounts, making their 1.0 characters indeed inaccessible. It's also possible your original account data might have been deleted, which would explain the lack of your CE code and Legacy status.

Check your account on the Mogstation - does it show the Legacy logo and the CE items listed there? If it does not, then I'm afraid the cause is probably what I just mentioned sadly (I don't remember anyone who had similar issues ever being able to resolve this problem I'm sorry).