How to prevent making nicks and marks in wire?

Hello everybody!
I hope this topic has not yet been discussed to death, but I did a
search and nothing really came up, so...
How can I prevent nicks and marks from my pliers when I work with
wire?
I have tried several things that were suggested to me: I put both
masking tape and duck tape over the plieres. (Not at the same time, of
course.) While that was good in the beginning, the surface of both
eventually got destroyed and there wasn't really any protection any
more. Plus, the sticky stuff made the wire all nasty and slippery, so
it was actually harder to get a good grip. (And I had to clean the
sticky stuff off afterwards.)
Now somebody suggested to superglue thin leather on the gripping
surfaces of my pliers. Haven't yet tried it and hope for some input
from you. Does anybody know a foolproof solution? Thanks in advance.
Jennamyria