Bashiok posted a few of these things in reference to Elder Charms in 5.2 on the official forums:
Drop chances of gear in 5.0 raids have been increased substantially with 5.2, so even without the coins you have a much better chance of getting loot now than you did before even with a normal roll and a coin.Also keep in mind the new 5.2 content isn't exclusive to people that have done all of the 5.0/5.1 content. It's tuned a little tougher but still someone can level to 90, jump straight to the Isle of Thunder, and start doing stuff on the island and finding Elder Charms. Even if you're still working on 5.0 raids, you should be looking to do some of the new 5.2 content.
The Elder Charms also drop fairly frequently on the isle.Having done the dailies on three characters yesterday and again this morning, does anyone have any more information about these? Trying to gear up alts and being able to for example, que multiple times for Terrace to keep using Charms for tier and weapons on the third and fourth boss would be rather beneficial but I have yet to see one just randomly drop which is supposedly frequent and I haven't seen any of these chests just laying around that he mentioned in another post. Other than the final completion quest that gives you the chest similar to completing your Golden Lotus dailies for the day, has anyone seen a source of Elder Charms like Bashiok claims to just be common all around the new island?Considering you can almost literally find them just laying around in chests on the island, I wouldn't say it's necessarily harder to obtain them. Getting 90 Lesser Charms to convert into 3 probably took more time than it'll take to find 3 on the island.
Doing the dailies six times between my characters leads me to believe that if he claims it's easier to find three than to get the three through ninety lesser charms I would have seen one somewhere.