Yeah, grandfathering sucks! And it opens the whole system to insider trading of which you will never know.
Having said that, there could still be a couple of gems to pick off, given that the previous registrar/ry system was frankly kinda arcane and registration was a pain in the arse.
Also, people come and go. So, notifications for many so-called grandfathered domains may fall into dead emails.
I'm going for only two .cn domains. With a bit of homework, you may be able to grab some pretty good ones. But for $50?