Why not? I know one man who was told by his wife that she found this pretty red leather coat on the clearance rack and after all of her discounts she paid $6 for it!! He believed her - true story!! She really paid $60 for it.
So tell her rather than getting it off a clearance rack you got it at a salvage sale - and go with this story - "The auctioneer thought this was a 305 motor, which is highly undesirable, so no one was bidding on it - I could clearly tell that it is a 350 motor, which would originally sell for $1000, but it got down to $10 and I bid on it. I didn't even really want it, but $10 for a $1000 motor is hard to turn up. I could turn around and sell this and make $990 profit".
By the way, I have my own little profitable side business going on. Several of our high performance customers demand we never give them a receipt so their wife doesn't find out how much they spent. For a $50 fee per transaction I will offer my complete secrecy. Ha ha. Some say this is blackmail, but I disagee
