Please disregard if this has been widely known. I assume at this point, everyone knows about the strange coin farming that was patched early on by Bungie; well, there was one thing they forgot to patch - 1st public event with your alt. The method goes that you create a new toon, grind through the getting the ship mission, back to the tower, then head back out to Earth for the 1st mission, however, instead of following the objective, just use destinypublicevent to find the next public event spot and participate. Pray that there will be other higher level guardians to help you out there. Finish your first event, abandon the mission, head back to the tower; if you didn't get an award at the end of the public event, hopefully you'll get one in the mail. Delete your toon, create a new one, rinse, and repeat. Keep in mind that aside from shards, you can also get energies, coins and motes of light. I have not personally tested this, but sounded like legit from online posting. Not sure if Bungie will patch this soon. Good luck to all the upper 20s.