The rulebook says when you use a search item, flip the card over and keep it in your play area. Does that mean that search items never go back into the search deck once they get used? If so, wouldn't that mean that the heroes could hoard search items, causing the search deck to be only a couple of cards?

Also, I didn't see anying regarding when the used item card is "unflipped." Do you unflip the card between encounters or between quests?

Unless they have Aurim from the CK (or Lair expansion's Secret Room), heroes can only get one card per hero per encounter most of the time, so 3 cards with 3 heroes. They keep them for the duration of the quest (E1 and E2), but once used, they never unflip. After the quest they are sold off and the Search deck starts at 12 cards for the next quest.

Dam said:

I assume you mean they are sold as long as they aren't used, right?

Sold regardless, so might as well use them:

"Then return all Search cards to the deck (even if the heroes

I confirm : whether you use the searched items or not, you sell them - and you reconstitute the search card deck between quests.

PS: It has also been clarified that if you do manage to run through the entire Search deck in a single quest, you do not reshuffle anything. Any additional search tokens are now useless.