Bargain hunting versus "list shopping"?

i am envious of collectors who have stayed true to their goals. I have developed into the type who goes for anything and everything now. Its great because I can always find something but bad in that im yet to finish anything I've started yet.

I always suggest doing as I do. By me we have 4 coin shows a Month, all year long. Prior to going to these shows I always sit down with a list of all the coins I need to complete sets. I also have a list of coins I just would like to buy if there. I sometimes look up all the prices so I know what I'm possibly in for mony wise.
Then I go to a coin show and leave those lists at home.

Personally I am a list buyer. But my list is really long because I really don't have much of a collection as of right now.

I stick strictly to my list.... of course my list includes: all world coins, all animal subject coins, all historical coins, all coins that grab my attention, etc. It really is a great hobby, but very difficult to control yourself to just one type of coin for me anyway.

That's the only down side I can see to bargain hunting. You get hooked on too many different issues and create a bigger "got to have" list.

I'm world coin collector (20th-21st century type sets as a main goals) so it's very cost efficient to look for bargains. My list is so wide that I find easily something to buy at a bargain price. Of course it would be more rewarded if I would complete one country first and then another (minus hardest/high priced ones...) but this is the cheapest way I assume. I rarely buy bargains if they don't fit to my list.

I'm enough of a bargain hunter that I try to look for bargains even in my relatively few "lists"
Then again, most of what I thought was bargains ended up nothing of the sort, but I've got enough of actual bargains to seriously consider continuing it.

Unfortunately, my main "list" (one-copeck types) is now at the point where the few remaining post-1700 issues either aren't going to be a bargain unless they're fake or are out of my price range even at bargain levels (or sometimes both), and for pre-1700 the list just becomes murky in its own definition (e.g. can I substitute an already uncommon patronymic-less Feodor Ioannovich for a much rarer Feodor Borisovich if you couldn't tell these apart without a catalogue handy?); as for my other "lists", most of those are approximately at "I would certainly love to get that coin, but I haven't ever seen any offered in person", where "that coin" includes such surprising things as buffalo nickels and Franklin halves (never mind anything actually uncommon, like coins minted in New Orleans).