The coin looks
fine to me, although the
bust does command some attention.
I won't mention the dealer's name, but you may recognize it from this original photo. It should give some confidence that the coin is
good.
> Strangely, the combination of tall, almost crowded soldiers and the flat
legend at the top make it seem that the central design was
engraved prior to the
legend and the top
part of the
legend was forced to be rather flat given space limitations
Yes, although this seems to be the normal way they worked - design first, then
legend working around it.
The tall soldiers have not left enough room for the
legend to curve above their heads, so there was no
choice but to fit it in this way instead. This
scarce SMANT vs SMAN issue is the first of the
Gloria Exercitvs type at
Antioch, so maybe the engraver was just experimenting a
bit here (with the tall soldiers).
It reminds me a
bit of my Trier coin, bottom left, where the engraver also chose to make the soldiers much larger than usual (vs more typical specimen on right), with elbows extending out into the
legend area, although in this case it didn't affect the
legend. Maybe the same engraver did the
bust on this Trier coin, since he also decided to make that atypically large.