Guide in choosing good overall PIC dev board
The Explorer 16 Development board is very good because you can buy PIMs to evaluate different microcontrollers (PIC24 and PIC32) and expansion boards called PICTail boards to evaluate different technologies like Ethernet, wireless, and graphical LCDs. All without having to create your own boards or mess with a soldering iron.

The PIC18 Explorer board is the same as the Explorer 16 board, but for evaluating PIC16 and PIC18 parts. It too has PICTail cards that can be plugged into it to evaluate additional hardware.