Personally I really liked this process, but then again, I am saying this from the perspective of somebody lucky enough to get in this first release, basically by pure chance.
If you were to keep doing batches of 15 or so moving forward, I think this would be a good process to keep. I've mentioned this to you in email, but I'm not sure I see this process being realistic/possible on a large scale
I'm not a fan of the "feeding frenzy" type drops at all, especially when each unit is so unique and different. That's a better method when each unit is the same, you either get one or you dont. But when you have little works of art, each hand crafted and designed by the artist with no input from the buyer, a little more time to pick and choose is great. I also like the way we had 5 picks, there was a preference order, idk, the whole thing just felt very smooth and well planned out to me.
Plus as you said, you're getting great feedback on what seems to be "crowd favorites" by doing it this way. Which is great to kind of figure out future toads too!