I agree with all the excellent posts and suspect that you are listening. I encourage you to read this forum and continue your research, it is a LOT cheaper to learn about problems of others rather than those you suffer yourself. There are many good books and the Internet has tons of free information. Keep a directory on your hard drive for all the information you will collect and for the contact information of suppliers. Collect all the FREE parts catalogues that you can so you have current information of parts prices. Join the local Vette club and meet the members, they probably know all about the local dogs to avoid (and the local flip artists and known crooks) and will also be the first to know when a good car becomes available. Offer to help owners work on their cars.
As an apprentice with no experience, you will be on the bottom of the pay curve, you will probably change employers several times and as you gain experience will see your pay rates increase rapidly but there will also be large demands on your resources to cover the purchase of tools and for the completion of your schooling. You will see periods of under or unemployment. You will need reliable and cheap transportation and pre85 Vettes tend to use LOTS of gasoline. At this stage of your life you will probably also be moving out on your own and will be changing your address frequently, few of your homes will have good places to store or work on a project car and moving is not easy. You will also be learning about girls and alcohol both of which are expensive and do not mix well with horsepower and gasoline.
After a surprisingly few years you will have completed your apprenticeship and will be making a very good wage, will have purchased your needed tools and hopefully have resisted (not so) easy credit and will have saved a substantial amount of money, and will be in a position to purchase a much better car. Hopefully you will have also have learned something about girls and alcohol and will be more mature and better equipped to deal with the added responsibility of horsepower.
Continue to look at all the available cars and develop some personal WRITTEN checklist forms to use to evaluate them. Keep a file including the serial numbers and contact information about the owners. There are not that many good cars out there and they do not change hands often, most of what you find will be the least desirable cars which are looking for an uninformed sucker who will jump for the first available car he sees. The poor cars churn much more often than the good ones. After you have carefully evaluated a LOT of cars you will find that it gets a lot easier and you will know what to look for and will have seen a lot of problems. You will have also learned to exercise restraint and how to keep your money in your pocket and walk away. You will also notice how fast the price comes down when the seller is negotiating with your back as you walk away.
Remember always, that the best value is always to buy a really good car and that 'you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear', or 'you cannot restore low mileage back into a poor old car', or 'it costs twice (or more) as much to make a #3 (or even worse a #4or5) car into a # 2 than it does to just buy one that always was a #2.
After you have done all the above homework, you will recognize the car you want easily from 50' away, and will know how much to offer to pay for it. Never underestimate the value of cash or a REAL offer, sellers of old cars do not see much of either.
Good luck, YMMV