(FORTUNE Magazine) – Hold the shredder. That pile of old annual reports gathering dust may be more valuable than you think. The Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York City believes annual reports have artistic merit. In July it placed over 250 of them on exhibit. Cooper-Hewitt's staff spent 18 months tracking down thousands of reports and came up with: a 1653 income statement from Mercers Co., a British textile trading firm; the East India Company's 1794 ''Annual Account of Revenues''; a Pennsylvania Hospital statement printed by Benjamin Franklin in 1761; and a round 1982 annual report from Domino's Pizza that was delivered in a pizza box. Some annual reports are amusing, if you know the rest of the story. E.F. Hutton's 1980 cover boasted: ''Hutton's 77 years of uninterrupted profits are unmatched in the securities industry.'' Six years later the firm lost $90 million. The 1959 Studebaker-Packard report featured two couples in a spanking yellow Lark convertible. The company stopped making cars in 1966. Over the years, corporations have spared no expense in enlisting famous designers, photographers, and artists such as Norman Rockwell, Milton Glaser, and Andrew Wyeth to create striking annual reports. Sid Cato, whose firm tracks annual reports, figures corporations spend $5.1 billion a year producing these glossy handouts. Says he: ''This is their corporate greeting card.''- C.G.