Unfortunately, germanium transistors are rare and as such expensive. They are not often needed; with guitar effects being the only application I know of (possibly some radio circuits?). So, you may have to buy from the expensive place you have seen them, but 5 should be plenty. I expect you have checked ebay, though I doubt there are any there.
One other way to get some is to buy garage sale radios, especially portables from the way-back machine. Many of them will have several germaniums in them, often matched pairs in fact.
NTE101 is supposedly a cross for this also. You can likely get a NTE part in lots of places. Ugly prices though, still in the 5 buck range.
Do a search of the stomp-box pages and you will see many substitutes for the germaniums.
The HFE of transistors is a range like from 40 to 160. Some transistors have a letter suffix that indicates a tighter range.
Here is a list of European germanium transistors. Note that N polarity is NPN and P is PNP.