As with everything, it depends if you want 6-pin PIC10, 80-pin PIC18 or everything in between....

I've got a 18F4520 board from Sure Electronics on the desk almost all the time. It's small, cheap, has a USB<->UART, buzzer, couple of LEDs, a button or two and a 2*20 LCD on board and I have it loaded with MicroCodeLoader so it's real quick to test non hardware intensive stuff - I like it.

I've got a PICPLC16 board from MikroE which I bought for a specific project I've been working on, it's good for "industrial control" since it has a power relays, opto-isolators, RS485 interface etc. I've also got an old(ish) EASYPIC4 board, also from MikroE, which is more "general purpose" and can be used with MANY different PICs but I haven't used it for quite some time.

I can really recommend the boards from MikroE, they are of high quallity with good layout and are clearly marked and they have a boatload of small boards you can attach to them (which fits all there boards which is nice).

But don't throw away the breadboards, you'll need them!

/Henrik.