I have old germanium transistor from computers that were dumped in the 70's. The Hfe varies between 50 to 150. The Vbe varies between 110 and 230.
A couple of these have a short between collector and emittor, below 1 ohm. (The intention was to make an oscillator under 1 V. The reference I got from this group were sine oscillators. The circuit that I are going to try is a blocking oscillator that hopefully convert 1 to 6/7 volts to replace a 9V battery.)