There is a new shop open for business in downtown Seymour.

Lost and Found Toys, located at 113 W. Second St., opened in October and specializes in selling comic books, toys and collectibles — both new and old — from a variety of popular properties, such as Star Wars, Transformers, G.I. Joe and more.

Natalie Croquart, who founded the business with her husband, Greg, said their passion for collecting started around 10 years ago when the two began going out together to find G.I. Joe toys for their collection.

“It was just kind of our thing that we did. Then about five years into it, we start doing toy shows. And it has just kind of grown from there,” she said. “We’ve just really enjoyed hanging out with local collectors and other collectors and just seeing the passion that they have. It’s really neat.”

Eventually, the couple decided to sell some of the G.I. Joe items they had amassed at a toy show in Louisville, Kentucky. As part of their offerings at the show, they brought many of the small and easy to lose accessories and pieces that accompanied these vintage figures when they were originally sold years ago. They were pieces that had been lost to time and had become quite sought after by many collectors.

Croquart said those accessory pieces sort of became their identity at toy shows, and they became known as a go-to seller for those kind of items, many of which were otherwise difficult to track down.

After finding success selling at these shows, the idea of opening a retail storefront became a goal of theirs but one that was seemingly quite a ways away.

Their original plan was to open the business when the youngest of their five children, Peyton, currently in eighth grade, graduated from high school. Their plan was set in motion nearly six years early, after space that currently serves their business on Second Street became available.

“Everything just kind of fell into place,” she said.

After remodeling the store for a couple of months, the business officially opened. During that time, the Croquarts shopped around anywhere they could find vintage toys and collectibles, building up as wide and diverse of an inventory as they could.

“This stuff was stuff we’ve collected over the years, we brought a lot of that with us and we were always constantly looking for toys on Whatnot or eBay,” Croquart said. “Or we go yardsaling or we go to different shows and just try to find different varieties of toys. We try to get every toy line, all the different years, so somebody’s going to have something they remember.

“Somebody’s going to walk in the door and they’re going to be like, ‘I had that as a child.’ We’ve heard that line I don’t know how many times in the last month we’ve been here. So it’s really neat to watch people’s faces light up seeing their childhood toys. It’s really cool.”

Both Natalie and Greg currently work full-time jobs outside of operating the store, which has led to the store primarily being open during evening hours on select days of the week.

Those hours are 4 to 8 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday.

With their jobs, opening and operating the business and their responsibilities as parents, their schedules are often packed tight, but Natalie said they’ve become accustomed to the workload.

“We are very busy people. I told (Greg) that if we were to slow down, we won’t know what to do with ourselves,” she said.

As the business continues to grow, she said they are looking to add an online store, where customers around the world will be able to purchase their items to be shipped directly to them. They also hope to operate the store full time at some point in the future.

“I would hope that it’s successful to where maybe we cannot work our other job. That’d be great,” Natalie said. “I just want to be open. I just want the opportunity. And the people have really expressed how they like that this is here. They really think this is neat. This is something that they want to see stay open because there’s nothing like this around here.

“Whatever God’s plan is for this, we don’t know. I mean, it’s definitely not in our control, so we just want to grow and stay here. We don’t want to go the other direction.”

Another priority for the Croquarts is connecting with other collectors and using the shop to spread the same kind of joy to others that she and her husband have been able to experience building their collections over the years.

“We just want people to feel joy, bring their children and everybody has something in common. Nothing brings families and kids and parents together more than something that they both have in common,” Natalie said. “There may be days where we have nobody in. There may be days we have five people and we get five conversations out of that day, and talking toys with people is really fun. It’s really fun to hear their stories and their lives and how they got into toys. That gives us just as much enjoyment.”