I'll probably regret belaboring the point since, most likely, doing so will merely entice more quibbling ........ That having been said, here are two copies of the seller's photo which I enhanced in Photoshop, one with a blown-up detail of the bag. See below.
While the photo is still fuzzy and the details are not really clear, it does at least APPEAR that the logo on the bag is intact.
My guess is that the photo was taken before the bag was washed, not after. Because, again, my experience with this exact type of Kirby bag is that if you wash it, the logo suffers from exposure to water and begins to disintegrate. If you machine-wash it in hot water, the logo will probably completely disintegrate. And the bag will shrink. Significantly.
Quite a few years ago, I had a beautiful 519 bag that looked dingy and kinda yellowish. However, it had a perfectly intact logo, something that even then was hard to find. Well, I made the huge mistake of thinking that if I carefully hand-washed it in cold water and Woolite, no harm would come to the bag. I'd have a bag with bright and vivid colors, and with a perfect logo.
WRONG.
I gently folded the bag into the sink full of cold water and Woolite. Right before my very eyes, the logo immediately began flaking off and bits of silver and red started floating up in the water. Horrified, I snatched the bag out of the water and let it line dry. By the time it was fully dried, all the lettering had come off and there were bits of red and silver flaked all over the bag. Talking about a major sob-fest.
-ooOoo-
Maybe some people don't know how those Kirby logos were applied. Well, they were silk-screened using a certain type of printing process. The logo outline and lettering are made of printer's ink. Over years, the ink loses its oil-based moisture and begins to dry out and harden. As it does, hairline cracks start developing in the ink, and the more the logo is disturbed, the deeper the cracks begin developing.
(If those of you who have 516~561 bags would care to have a look at the logos under a magnifying glass, you'll see this.)
Well, once the cracks begin developing, if the bag gets wet, water gets in under and behind the lettering through the cracks in the ink. Because the ink is brittle and dried-out, there's nothing holding it to the bag any longer, and it just falls off. What you usually end up with is a shadowy outline on the bag where the logo used to be.
Some bags have survived better than others, so, obviously, some bad effects are worse than others when washing depending on how much heat, humidity and sunlight the bag has been exposed to. But I personally would no longer want to take the chance that a particular Kirby has been kept in a hermetically sealed vault away from heat, humidity and sunlight.
As I said before, in the beginning of this lamentable saga, I would never again wash any of the gray or black Kirby bags with silk-screened logos.
Others may feel differently, of course.
