By the looks of it, that stuff was garbage 20 years ago!
Sadly, I see this all the time.

Is it greed? Ignorance? The compulsion to hoard?

Up here in the frozen Tundra, my Inuit guide Nanook and I have found many hoard collections like this. Some former junkyards, some still operational junkyards. One was just a random field owned by a crazy old man. The winters aren't kind to steel up here.

It wasn't long ago, a tow-truck driver acquaintance of mine told me his company is helping to clear out a well-known cache of vintage oxide and there was a Gremlin among them. He asked if I wanted it and could even deliver Of course I was interested. Regardless of what year it could still be a wealth of parts. Several days go by, I don't hear from my friend and I soon forget about it. He came back in the store a few weeks later, my memory was triggered so I asked about the Gremlin. "Oh that.... yeah, we hooked a chain around the crossmember and pulled.... the engine and fenders came out from under the tree but the rest stayed. Didn't think you'd want me dropping off a car in two pieces."

And he told me that 95% of what they pulled out was like that. Y'know, 30 years ago when we played in that stuff as kids, it might have been salvageable. Just heard of another local legend, a big block Nova SS got crushed by the snow load a few weeks ago when the lean-to it was under gave way.