Doing large collection quests does suck but look at it this way. In the grand scheme of things its going to add what, 8 hours total to your leveling time to 80, and after that you won't have to worry about it again. Once you hit 80 you can just burn through any quests you want to do to make money and then most of what you do after that will have nothing to do with collecting things.

All in all I do find most of the northrend collection quests to be easier/more fun than the BC collection quests. The drop rates are generally higher and northrend seems to be a bit more fun.