In 2008, still many years before the thought of forming a nonprofit museum, Steve was giving tours to school kids on a regular basis. It’s always given Steve great joy to share the items from his collection. Seeing the emotion on people’s faces or hearing their gasps as the door opens to the museum is life-affirming.
Over the years as we were able to clean up the museum and get more organized Steve would hand out Master Replica lightsabers for the kids to hold, even gently handing over a real stunt lightsaber. Over a thousand tours some items begin to show wear and we no longer let guests hold these. Even then, at the end of the tour we had a toy box for kids to pick a gift as they left. Nowadays we give out gifts donated by licensees like DK Books and Hallmark.