The House
Sayyid & Najjar Co. was founded in Dubai in 1983 by two families already trading in the Gulf gem markets. We have bought and sold continuously through every cycle since.
In 1983 Dubai was not yet the trading capital it has become. There was no Diamond Exchange, no Multi Commodities Centre, and no Almas Tower — there was a creek, a gold souk, and a network of families who had moved stones and metal between the Gulf, India and East Africa for generations. Our founders were part of that network. The company they formed was built on the only infrastructure that existed at the time: knowing the goods, and being known.
Four decades later the city has changed beyond recognition and the business has changed with it — laboratories, compliance frameworks, escrow, secure logistics, international benchmarks updated by the week. What has not changed is the part that matters most. A broker in Antwerp will still commit to a parcel on a telephone call because of who is on the other end of it. A family office in Geneva will still send a collection to Dubai for valuation on the strength of a relationship formed in the 1990s.
We are not a retailer, and this is not a shop. We hold no showroom, run no seasonal collection, and carry no marketing budget that has to be recovered from the price we offer you. When we buy, it is because someone in our network wants precisely what you are holding — and that demand, rather than a fixed buy-back percentage, is what determines the figure.
We have also traded through enough cycles to be careful. The Asian crisis of 1997, the collapse of 2008, the shutdown of 2020 and the strange, sharp market that followed it — each one taught the same lesson, which is that the houses that survive are the ones that priced honestly when it was inconvenient to do so.
The house at a glance
Chronology
Two Gulf trading families formalise a partnership in Dubai, dealing in polished diamonds and gold at a moment when the city’s trade was still built on relationships rather than infrastructure.
A standing relationship with an Antwerp polished house gives the firm direct access to European supply — and, just as importantly, to European pricing.
A dedicated colour desk opens as Mozambican ruby and Madagascan sapphire begin reshaping a market that had been defined by Burma and Kashmir for a century.
The house adopts Kimberley Process certification from its inception, ahead of local requirement, and formalises written provenance on every rough transaction.
Operations move to the Dubai Diamond Exchange in Jumeirah Lakes Towers, placing grading, vault and settlement on a single floor.
A specialist desk is established as Gulf collectors begin trading watches and signed pieces with the same seriousness as loose stones.
The firm begins trading laboratory-grown diamonds on a separate book, with a standing rule that a lab-grown stone is never quoted at a natural price.
Eight correspondent desks, private-treaty transactions in five currencies, and the same grading bench the house started with.
What does not change
Compliance frameworks arrived, laboratories tightened, logistics professionalised. The part that decides whether a client comes back — telling them what a thing is actually worth — has not moved since 1983.
How we trade
These are not values on a wall. They are the specific commitments clients hold us to, and the reason a good number of them have been with the house for two generations.
If your stone is treated, your bag is counterfeit, your watch has a service dial or your certificate is from a laboratory that grades softly, you will hear it in the first conversation — with the reasoning, and with a real number attached. Flattery costs a seller more than candour ever does.
Every offer comes with the comparables it rests on, the benchmark applied and the deductions taken. A figure presented without its arithmetic is an assertion, and assertions are how people are underpaid.
We are a private-treaty house. No listings, no catalogues, no auction, no advertising, and no discussion of a client’s holdings with anyone — including other clients. Estate work is conducted under written confidentiality as standard.
Kimberley Process certification on every rough transaction, Responsible Jewellery Council principles on sourcing, and full identity and ownership verification above the regulatory threshold. This protects honest sellers at least as much as it deters the other kind.
Clients regularly take our valuation to two other houses. We encourage it. A number that survives comparison is worth something; one that does not, is not — and a seller who returns because our figure held up is worth more than a margin taken once.
Weighing a Van Cleef Alhambra necklace destroys most of its value in a single act. If what you hold is worth more intact, we will tell you — even when the intact transaction earns us less.
Memberships & compliance
Registration and licence details are provided in full on request and on every written offer.
Speak to the house
There is no minimum, no fee and no obligation. Whether you hold one ring or an entire estate, the assessment is the same and so is the standard of attention.
