When Dave Nuciola was a boy, the Electric Ball Circus sculpture at the old Long Ridge Mall in Greece was a particular point of his fascination.

Whenever his uncle would take him to the mall, he'd make his way down by the Sears store to watch the sculpture's colored balls travel through wire loops, activate spinning chains and set off hammers to ring bells.

"I remember really wanting it when I was a little boy," said Nuciola, 33, a Hamlin collectibles dealer. "It's kind of odd it came into my possession years later."

In the 1990s, when Long Ridge Mall was joined with Greece Towne Mall to make the mammoth Mall at Greece Ridge, the Electric Ball Circus went missing, as did numerous other art pieces installed at Long Ridge by former mall owner David Bermant, a wealthy collector who believed so strongly in the importance of public art that he installed pieces throughout the nearly two dozen retail shopping properties he owned across the country.

In 2009, when Nuciola learned the Electric Ball Circus — one of the first ball machine sculptures created by renowned audiokinetic artist George Rhoads — was languishing in the backyard of a local man who'd rescued it from a trash heap, he stepped up and bought it.

"It's spent a lot of time outside (so) it's in rough shape, but it's not rusty," said Nuciola, whose affinity for local malls extends to running the Greece Mall Anthology website and Facebook page, a compendium of historic photos of Long Ridge Mall and the former Northgate Plaza.

He'd hoped to restore the Electric Ball Circus to its former glory, but estimates to get it fixed were steep: in excess of $7,000. And, he doesn't have any good place to display it even if he did get it fixed.

So now, Nuciola has listed the art piece on Craigslist, with a minimum purchase price of $3,500.

"I was offered $4,000 for it back in 2012 from a local collector who just had to have it and regrettably declined his generous cash offer," Nuciola wrote in his Craigslist post.

The artist, George Rhoads, 92, is a contemporary painter, sculptor and origami artist whose whimsical audiokinetic sculptures like the Electric Ball Circus have been installed in public spaces around the world. He has lived much of his life in the Finger Lakes region. Some of his works are at the Art Institute in Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and in the New York/New Jersey Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York. Others are at the Museum of Science in Boston, Discovery Science Center in California, Los Angeles International Airport, Science Center Singapore, National Taiwan Science Education Center and National Taiwan University Hospital. His work is also in the private collections of Malcolm S. Forbes, Leonard Bernstein, American Scientific and Westinghouse.

The David S. Bermant Foundation also still holds at least seven Rhoads pieces, including a sculpture called Windamajig II, which longtime Rochestarians may find familiar. The original Windamajig stood outside Long Ridge Mall for years, the exact time it was removed is unknown.

According to his website, Rhoads was inundated with commissions for ball machines after a 1972 appearance on The David Frost Show. Those commissions included ones from Bermant. Rhoads' catalog online shows the Electric Ball Circus as his fifth ball machine sculpture. It was installed at the Long Ridge Mall in 1974.

Joe O'Connell is an artist and president of Creative Machines Inc. in Tucson, Arizona. His company took over creation of Rhoads' sculptures in 2007. Previously — from 1989 to 2007 — Rhoads worked with Ithaca artist Robert McGuire to construct the works.

O'Connell said it is likely anyone who purchases the Electric Ball Circus would need to have extensive restoration done on the piece. And Creative Machines has the records and design sketches showing exactly how most of Rhoads' pieces were originally constructed.

"We do rebuild them, recently we rebuilt a high-profile public one and they ended getting a better device than the original, with more modern motors, etc. than what was available back then," he said. "From our perspective, it is as intensive to completely restore one as it is to build one from scratch. You would need to strip everything and it is almost more work to rebuild."

O'Connell said he hadn't heard of a Rhoads piece being sold on Craigslist before.

A Google search shows a handful of Rhoads' smaller sculptures have been auctioned in the past few years. In 2014, his Odyssey of the Spheres sold for nearly $12,000, according to MutualArt.com.

Part of Nuciola will hate to see the piece leave his possession. But it's been sitting in his garage for nearly a decade and he'd like some other collector, history buff or fan of Rhoads' work have a crack at taking it on.

"My ideal buyer?" he said. "I would say maybe a local businessman who will have it restored and put on display in a public place."

MCDERMOT@Gannett.com