yes, a long time ago. However, they are now dropping alot more in T1 zones- I'd say 90% of the chests in t1 are recipie books- hunt green ^ mobs with an alt twink, you should get several books in short order.
But only in the world of MMO's =] google 'twink', and you'll get an ENTIRELY different defintion...
but yeah, everybody does it- you level one toon the hard way, get gear and coin, get bored and want to start a new toon...but who wants to use newb gear when they have better gear rotting on thier main character? So they pass it to thier new character, and you have a twink.
With TLC (trivial loot code- aka the reason grey mobs don't drop treasure), theres a new reason to make twinks, as this thread demonstrates: to get certain items that only drop from certain zones or mobs, you create a toon that you intentionaly keep at a low level in order to get treasure you coudn't otherwise loot.
(a twink can also be a new player who has RL friends who already play and give them gear/coin to get started).