I have no idea if this is the truth but a friend of mine thinks that the item is rewarded for an act of valor. For ex. a succesful attack by a tiny kingdom, or an attack by someone with a small amount of troops. Any ideas??
well, there's more than one permanent item, and you can either get them as a random drop from one of three ebs, or from resets, or buying pro packs
He said "item drop," so he must be referring to the EB items. @OP, no one yet knows what the trigger is for the drop. More testing is needed.