What does 'nicking' mean? Is it scratching the wire or cutting few of the wires of multi-wire cable?
Nicking is when there's a partial cut or scrape on one or more of the copper strands (or solid wire, if it's a single conductor). Essentially, any damage to the copper, but none is fully cut through and missing.
Missing strands are more severe damage, aka cut strands, and either type of damage reduces the current capacity of the wire (reduced cross section at the point where it's damaged, thus increasing resistance).
Sometimes it's not worth the money for buying all the best on the market.
True, but for something used as often as strippers, pliers, and cutters, you don't want to scrape the bottom of the barrel either IMHO (more expensive in the long run, and a lot of aggravation tacked on as well due to poor performance). There's very well priced tools out there if you look, even in pricier markets such as Europe. One example in the pliers and cutters category, would be
Schmitz (rare instance they are absolute top quality without costing an arm and a leg; much cheaper than Knipex, Erem, Tronex, or Lindstrom for example). ~$16 - 23EUR per pair vs. 2-3x that or more for brands mentioned.
In the case of wire strippers, the Ideal Stripmaster can be had for ~$43USD here while say a top notch pair of Knipex can run ~$150 of similar construction. Quite a difference for example, and both are excellent tools.
Lots of info here that could help you locate such tools. All this said, for rarely used tools, I agree less expensive can make a lot more sense for a hobbyist IMHO.
But for 60+ EUR it has to do the dishes too...
Sadly, those haven't been invented yet, let alone would make it at that price point.
