  We present optical and near-infrared finding charts taken from the DSS and
2MASS surveys of 94 IRAS sources selected from the GLMP catalogue
(Garc\'{\i}a-Lario 1992), and accurate astrometry (~0.2") for most of them.
Selection criteria were very red IRAS colours representative for OH/IR stars
with optically thick circumstellar shells and the presence of variability
according to the IRAS variability index (VAR>50). The main photometric
properties of the stars in this `GLMP sample' are presented, discussed and
compared with the correspondent properties of the `Arecibo sample' of OH/IR
stars studied in Jim\'enez-Esteban et al. (2005a). We find that 37% of the
sample (N=34) have no counterpart in the 2MASS, implying extremely high optical
depths of their shells. Most of the sources identified in the 2MASS are faint
(K>~8) and of very red colour in the near-infrared, as expected. The brightest
2MASS counterpart (K=5.3mag) was found for IRAS 18299--1705. Its blue colour
H--K=1.3 suggests that IRAS 8299--1705 is a post-AGB star. A couple of GLMP
sources have faint but relatively blue counterparts. They might be misidentifed
field stars or stars hich experienced recently a drop of their mass loss rates.
The `GLMP sample' in general is made of oxygen-rich AGB stars, which are highly
obscured by their circumstellar shells. They belong to the same population as
the reddest OH/IR stars in the `Arecibo sample'.
