I think this is an interesting idea. Initially my thought was people should earn their skills the same way we've always done it. But it's a solid point that we've all been around EQ long enough that do we really need to go through the grind of skilling up seldom-used skills on the off-chance we get a weapon or whatever that we'd want to use?
So, with that in mind, my thinking is along these lines:
skill books would be possible to rarely drop that are worth various amounts of skill points (5, 10, maybe 20) for a single skill, and would be tradeable.
people could consume the book to gain the number of points in the skill that the book is for. The list of skill books that would be available would likely be limited to combat skills and primary caster skills: 1HB, 2HB, 1H Pierce, 2H Pierce, 1HS, 2HS, Alteration, Conjuration, Evocation, Abjuration, Divination.
As they would be tradeable, people could give them to alts to help quickly get them up to speed, or sell them to others.
Thoughts?