Nicely put. Yes, there is that subtle value of quality. So I suppose even if it doesn't bring in too much traffic, if it is a quality link (a nice clean link in a good position on the page) it can have good branding/awareness value plus a bit of extra traffic.
Yes. If it's quality AND quantity, then you've hit the motherlode. Here's my preferences: 1. quality and quantity. 2. quality. 3. quantity.
I'd love to have a nofollow link on foodnetwork or allrecipes. With 10 million uniques a month each, they could drive a little bit of traffic!
you can still buy it for seo, not all search engines use nofollow tag, but its not actual for countries where google dominates of course