I think if you do your homework even if you know little about cars some bargains can be had yes some are money pits and some need scrapping, but some send off to the scrappers because they've either failed the MOT or there old and due there MOT and expected to fail or the car isn't running right and they expect it to be an expensive fix or was told it could be but alot can be saved..
I went to look at one recently it was running poor so spares n repairs and also 20 odd year old but I'd checked the previous mot's online before hand and it had flew through all aswell as no advisories so was