I bought a bunch of 2SK170's and 389's (I think those are the right numbers, but don't hold me to it) in the late 90's when I first got into DIY. I say a bunch - probably about 20-30 of each. I assumed I'd have to spend a bunch of time matching and wanted to get perfect sound. This was for a Pearl Phono before there was a Pearl 2. . .
Anyway, never built it and around the time COVID shut everyone down, I decided to build the Pearl, but wasn't sure what to do about not having the transistors. I found that there were some options, but when pulling out my box of parts, I found the transistors. I think I paid about $1 ea and there have been people paying $10-20 each for real parts in recent history.
I built a matching rig and sure enough they were all legit (before the counterfeiting of those parts became common) and they were pretty well matched over the whole batch.
Still haven't finished the Pearl, due to a FUBAR on my case sizing, but I've got them all labelled and an excel sheet telling me which ones to use when I eventually finish it out.
Sandy.