This looks like a vacuum shop rebuild from the past and not anything recent. Mom and pop vacuum shops that did rebuilds under Kirby's authorization I think must have been told by Kirby to do this. I have a mom and pop vac shop rebuilt Kirby 500 series from the 80s and the model tag was ripped off of it too.
This shop might have lacked the tools to remove the tag or did not want to do it because they cared about vacuums but still had to abide the policy. They also did their best to match the bag too.
The idea was to stop people from selling rebuilt Kirbys as new vacuums in the future or at that time period. Without the tag present with serial number, the owner or the scammer would not be able to exploit the company's rebuild program, as they would not know what they had, or Kirby would know it's already been rebuilt once.
I think it's a dumb idea because they could have just had an engraver to put "rebuilt" into the chassis under the tag very deep and it would have achieved the same purpose without destroying the tag. I have a 500 series that I have no idea what model it even is now without playing Indiana Jones and hunting out all the design cues to ID the model - thank god Kirby always did new things with their vacuums each year and each model enough that they can be ID'ed just on features present.
But yeah that seller is just 100% dumb - being from LA I am not surprised. They have the shipping listed as $5 and that they will ship it first class. First class is for letters and small parcels under 13 ounces. This Kirby weighs about 20 lbs+. Shipping would be about $75+ from LA to here.
