On the matter of getting a lot of low rolls and losing... personally I think it sucks more to get a really high roll and lose, than a low roll. If I roll a 5, considering that there's 94 possible rolls that can beat mine I just think- ok this is one of the ones I'm not going to get. However when you roll an 89 or a 94 or whatever, you know this could very likely be your turn to win. Getting a 90 (which I'll use to make example easier) prob feels like you're very likely going to win, but while I'm not a mathematician I'm guessing each of your 7 other pary members has a roughly 1 in 10 shot that they roll a number higher than your 90 vs and where between 1 and 89. With a full 8 people bidding on each individual item, the number your roll for each one has to survive 7 individual challenges from other players, each with a 1/10 chance of beating you if you rolled a 90. So psychologically the feeling is there that 'How could I have not won this one, even with a high number I lose!' I would just remember that for each Sands of Time that's rolled on, there's 7 names in the list that didn't get it, and 8 people from your party will walk into ST wanting a Sands, but at a minimum 6 will walk out without getting one... 7 if one person wins twice.

One thing I've wondered about recently... people don't ever roll identical numbers, so whatever number turns up must be excluded from the list of possible values for subsequent rolls. Is there an advantage being the person to roll first or last, or does it matter? Something I was thinking is since we're essentially only rolling against the highest number or else it doesn't matter what we roll... when you have a lot of other people rolling, whoever amongst them gets the highest number is the one you have to beat, so does that mean everyone but one person is simply removing losing values from the pool of available numbers, and being the last to roll means having less potential losing numbers available to you???