Why does a "parts car" sell for more than the same car that's running?

I've been looking for parts for my old car (its 1981), and for some reason I noticed that sometimes the same car that's salvaged and being sold for just its parts is more expensive than the same car thats up and running. How does that make any sense? It's better to buy the car that's perfectly fine and use that for parts instead of buying some old rusty one.|||Try buying those parts individually from a wrecking yard. You can almost always make more money by parting out a car than by selling it to a wrecking yard. Someone who sells a car for parts does so because he knows the parts are in demand and doesn't want to settle for what a wrecking yard will pay him.|||" I noticed that sometimes the same car that's salvaged and being sold for just its parts is more expensive than the same car thats up and running" that should answer it sometimes people will charge more, im not sure what everyone else is talking about but a parts car is just that a parts car unless its an oddball care there parts car should never be more than buying a running decent condition car. and if you see that with your model that seems to be the case then buy a running model take what u need then you will also have a parts car to charge more than its worth.|||u always want an up and running car over a parts piece of crap. They are gonna get parts price for it no matter what, if its got $ 2k in parts on it why sell it for less? Buy one from an individual that dumped a bunch of new parts on it lately and still gotta get rid of it.