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Each cylinder has a "bore," or the space where the piston moves up and down. The stock Honda bores and fairly thin, made of a high-silica-content aluminum. This provides decent strength, and is fairly brittle. A good, solid iron bore, which would be installed by removing the stock aluminum bore by cutting around it and putting the new iron bore in place is thicker, stronger, and I believe less brittle, which is a positive attribute (and I believe the reason why iron is actually preferable to steel in this application).
As for the B20's I believe the going rate these days, just for the block, is perhaps $1,100. Once people find a good combination (like the B20 block with B17A crankshaft), everybody wants them and their prices get gouged. You can try to find them cheaper, or maybe even bore out a B18B block to make it into a B20 (B18B bore = 81 mm/B20 bore = 84 mm).
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