Sudden surge in folks wanting to buy links

Over the past two weeks I've suddenly started to get a surge in people wanting to buy direct text links and they all have one thing in common. They want to buy links on my periodic table of elements page for the element....
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(I bet you can guess this)
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GOLD!

Yes gold is the new "mesothelioma" of key words. All of the link requests have something else in common, they all want direct text links without the rel=nofollow attribute. I've even gotten a request for such a link from an apparent gold mine in Africa.

Given Google's obsession with the selling of text links and how badly I got burned a couple of years ago by a Google penalty, there is no way I'm selling any direct links without the rel=nofollow flag.

How badly did you get burned? Do you mind sharing? Just so the rest of us don't make the same mistakes.

I lost around 80% of my Google traffic and it took around two months to recover once I figured out what was going on.

The demand for gold bullion has been crazy in the last few months, the stock market crash got people thinking about other things to invest in. Somewhat like 1980

Ya the gold thing is a little crazy right now.

The sites looked like cheap sites trying to make a quick buck off of the current surge in gold prices.

Personally if I had big gold investments I would be selling them and buying up stocks. Sure stocks could go down more, but when they start to recover current stock prices will have seemed like a fantastic bargain.