No idea how this works though as I'm new to wow, how do people transfer the token? Do I need to be subbed to recieve it?

yeah gotta be subbed already to trade i think

but old posts I read say they are untradeable, so if I were to buy one on jsp what would the standard protocol be would they mail it to me, would we meet in game and they would give it to me through right click, trade... this is so confusing bc I'm new to wow thank you for the help

trade gold and you buy it on auction house

So when people are selling tokens on wow jsp forum they're essentially just selling gold?

yes