World-of-warcraft – What’s the respawn speed of Lost and Found treasure caches

There have been two major content pushes in roughly the past year, I'll cover them separately. I also won't bother going into the various mechanics changes or new raid content introduced, as you don't sound interested in those. I will note however that the quality of gear obtainable via badges has increased significantly with the introduction of new content.

Patch 3.2, Call of the Crusade

This patch added one new 5 man instance, the Trial of the Champion, with both normal and Heroic modes. Both modes drop epic items, with Normal mode dropping Epics on par with those found in Naxxramas-10 and other Heroic 5-mans (including some extremely desirable trinkets), and Heroic dropping gear on par with Ulduar-10.

In addition, 3.2 saw the expansion of the Argent Tournament, the daily-quest hub in northeastern Icecrown, with a new daily quests, new rewards, and a new quest chain.

Finally, 3.2 saw the introduction of a new Battleground in Isle of Conquest, which brings siege-engine and vehicle gameplay to a 40v40 map ala Alterac Valley.

Patch 3.3, Fall of the Lich King

The primary content introduction in patch 3.3 was the new 5 man instances at Icecrown Citadel, The Frozen Halls. There are three of them, which are designed to be completed roughly in order (in fact, the portal at the end of each leads into the next instance in the series, and to enter any but the first directly, you must be 'attuned' by completing all three. These instances drop Ulduar-10 quality gear on Normal mode, and on Heroic, drop gear on par with ToC-10 (A new raid released while you were away) - the best items available in any 5 man, outside of gear bought with badges.

The other major change in 3.3 however, is the introduction of the Dungeon Finder. Replacing the old LFG tool, the Dungeon Finder allows you to select the instance you'd like to run (or you can select to run a random one for additional rewards!), and the roles you're able to fill (tank, healing, or DPS), and within minutes, will pair you off with like minded players for a quick run through any 5 man. You can queue as a partial group as well, so you and your wife can queue together, and the game will automatically find 3 other players to finish out your group for any dungeon you'd like to run. Especially if one of you is capable of tanking, you'll find the queues to be phenomenally fast and convenient - no more spamming trade trying to find one more to run an instance!

From least time and tokens to most:

1. Purchasing the dungeon and PvP drops off the Auction House. They're going for anywhere between 100-1000g on my realm's AH, but literally takes seconds to do and you get anywhere between 4 to 10 tickets per completion (each item has its own value in tickets. These can be found on Wowhead). Obviously not the most efficient for gold, but a winner for time and tokens. These can only be completed once per week, so once per Faire.
2. The profession quests. These reward five tokens per completion, if memory serves, and you should be able to do six (two primary professions and four secondary). None took over five minutes to complete and most just require you to go to your capital to purchase the required items for a few copper. These are also weekly, so once per Faire.
3. The daily quests. At the rate of one ticket per daily quest, these reward five tickets in the same time it takes you to get more tickets from the other options.

Obviously your order will be different if you are gold limited, but for time and token investment that is the best order.