I am just not able to find any xBee series 2 zigbee boards for much less than $16-17 but those seem to be series 1, and I can’t find any xBee Grove development boards on eBay at all. There are xBee to USB boards anywhere from $4 (can I even trust that??) to well over $20 but most of them don’t have a reset button (apparently needed to do firmware updates).
Anyhow, I will do some research and make any future posts on @adam_walker’s thread discussing the xBee repeater solution.