Here's an article by Jon Peterson (increment here) about Bill's game company, WAW (World at World) and its connections with TSR in the early days. TSR's Bio One and Field Regulations were originally published by WAW.

Playing at the World: World At War, the TSR of the Twin Cities

webrik33 wrote in Original Dungeons & Dragons Set – Woodgrain - 1st Print:Could it be the Bill Hoyt history is what drove this up to such a price?

I would think so. With the school notes, it is pretty much an unique item, and even mentioned in Strategic Review, "ennobling" the whole thing. I would not have thought that these notes would still exist, much less in this condition.

Zenopus wrote in Original Dungeons & Dragons Set – Woodgrain - 1st Print:Per David Wesley in a comment here, "It was Bill Hoyt who later went to England and brought back the first 10-sided dice any of us had ever seen, bi-truncated octahedrons that were quite different from what most of us now think of as D10s."

I wonder if this was on the same trip referred to in the note included in the auction?

The d20 that sold in this auction anyway looked to me like a Creative Publications d20 (which they sourced from HK). There were a variety of 20 siders available in the UK from 1969 or so onwards, though, and Bill and others in the Twin Cities made trips overseas where they may have acquired those. Those just don't happen to be the source for the d20s that D&D ended up using. And yes, there were also oddball d10s, from a design tradition outside of Lou Zocchi's, sold with some board games in the UK that could have made their way back through the same path.