Wasn't Andreas Viklund andreasviklund.com a whopping Pagerank 8 not too far ago? Shows PR5 for me now. That's gotta hurt. And I wonder why? I don't think the sold links? So it would be a downgrade for having footer links mainly? Why would they be treated differently.. (Not to say I would be suprised if they were, but they shouldn't). ...Uh oh... just saw he's offering 8 text links through text-link-ads.com. That's got to be the reason. What do you think?
It could of been from text link sales, buying or selling can effect your PR. Directly selling text links will prevent your site from passing on PR and get your PR dropped. If you buy text links, the site your buying from can get penalized and you'll no longer get your pagerank bleed from them and in-turn lose PR.
did you look at the site? the guy doesn't sell or buy links on his site, he gives away free templates
Many blogs lost their 1 or two points of their PR but this would not affect them if they appear top in search results.