About this reference

This site is operated by Digital Signet, an independent publisher of consumer-reference websites. We are not affiliated with the Gemological Institute of America, the International Gemological Institute, the Antwerp World Diamond Centre, Bain & Company, the Federal Trade Commission, the De Beers Group, the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, or any diamond retailer, miner, or laboratory. We have no commercial relationship with any of the institutions cited in our chapters and we accept no payment for inclusion.

The site exists because the head query "lab grown vs natural diamond" is dominated by retailer pages, advocacy pages, and recycled blog content with little citation discipline. We think there is value in a reference site whose entire claim to ranking is that every figure is cited to a named public source.

Five rules govern what appears on this site:

1. Every numeric or regulatory claim is cited to a named public source. Each chapter has a Sources block at the bottom. The full citation index is on the Sources page.
2. Pricing figures come from three sources only: the Bain Global Diamond Industry Report, AWDC trade-figure press briefings, and De Beers Group public press releases about the Lightbox brand. We do not use retailer price lists, user-submitted price quotations, or Rapaport list prices in pricing comparisons.
3. No affiliate links and no sponsored content. The site is monetised, if at all, by display advertising at low density only. We accept no payment from retailers in any form.
4. No retailer rankings. We do not publish "best place to buy" lists. Retailer names appear only once on this site, in the section below, and only in the context of explaining which sources we deliberately exclude.
5. Corrections are versioned. Each page carries a "last verified" date. When we update a figure or correct a claim, we change the date and note the change. Stable claims keep their original verification date.

A small number of retailer brands appear in industry conversation about lab-grown vs natural diamonds. Some of them rank in the top results for the head query. We deliberately exclude their pricing pages and their marketing claims from our citation set. The list below is published once, here, in the context of explaining the editorial decision.

We exclude these sources for two reasons. First, retailer prices are promotional and vary widely between vendors and over time. Two retailers can quote substantially different prices for the same nominal grade, and a buying-guide that uses one retailer's price as a benchmark is anchored to that retailer's promotion calendar. Wholesale and market-level data, as published by Bain and AWDC, smooths the dispersion and gives a more stable basis.

Second, retailers are commercial parties with an incentive to favour their own pricing in any comparison. Even when they cite competitor prices, the comparison is constructed to support their commercial position. We use neutral public-source data instead.

This is a deliberate editorial choice and we accept the trade-off: by excluding retailer prices, we cannot tell a reader the cheapest place to buy a one-carat colourless lab-grown round brilliant. We can tell them, with sources, what the wholesale ratio is and how it has moved.

This site is an independent educational reference. It is not affiliated with the Gemological Institute of America, the International Gemological Institute, the Antwerp World Diamond Centre, Bain & Company, the Federal Trade Commission, the De Beers Group, or any diamond retailer, miner, or laboratory. All statistics and pricing figures are attributed to public sources; see each page's Sources block for citations.

Information on this site is provided for educational purposes and does not constitute financial, legal, or appraisal advice. Diamond purchasing decisions involve specific stones, specific certificates, and specific retailers and are best supported by qualified gemmological appraisal and, where appropriate, professional financial advice.

We welcome corrections. If a figure on this site is out of date or incorrectly attributed, the right way to flag it is to provide the correct primary source. We will update the page, change the "last verified" date, and credit the correction. Contact through the publisher, Digital Signet, at digitalsignet.com.

A related reference site from the same publisher: amexgoldvsplatinum.com, an independent comparison of the American Express Gold and Platinum cards in the same source-cited format.