Thanks for sharing the long story. It helps to see what you're trying to do. I can understand your approach and can see why you might initially think this is a good logical approach.
However, I'll try to convince you to try to use another approach. The common approach is to take a snapshot of the view during the drag, then add it to the superview and move it around with the drag from one collection to another. Let me know if this approach makes conceptual sense.